Architectural Possibilities in the Work of Eisenman (Routledge Research in Architecture) [1 ed.] 0367181835, 9780367181833

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Architectural Possibilities in the Work of Eisenman

This book examines the central decades of Peter Eisenman’s work through a formal and thematic analysis of key architectural projects and writings, revealing underlying characteristics and arguing for their productive continuity and transformative role. The book explores Eisenman’s approach to architectural form generation and thinking. It does this through a thematic and formal analysis of projects and writings from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. Following an introductory chapter addressing the theme of potentialities, the book is organised in two parts. The first part focuses on key period writings of Eisenman, framing the close reading around a practice of resistance, the architect’s approach to history as analysis, and the transformative conceptualisation of time. In the second part, the book undertakes an analysis of select projects from the 1980s and 1990s. Three formal preoccupations and conceptual orientations – ground manipulations, figuration, and spatial events – organise this part of the book. Previously unpublished material from the Peter Eisenman fonds, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, provides primary source material. A concluding chapter addresses Eisenman’s teaching, its relation to his larger project, and possible legacies for educators, practitioners, scholars, and theorists. Michael Jasper is Professor of Architecture in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra. A former Visiting Scholar at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, and former Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome, he is the author of Architectural Aesthetic Speculations, and Deleuze on Art: The Problem of Aesthetic Constructions.

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Architectural Possibilities in the Work of Eisenman

Michael Jasper

Credit Line: Eisenman/Robertson Architects. Site plan for University Art Museum, Long Beach, California, 1986-1988, graphite on translucent paper, 105 × 101 cm, DR1987:0859:302. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Michael Jasper The right of Michael Jasper to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jasper, Michael (Professor of architecture), author. Title: Architectural possibilities in the work of Eisenman / Michael Jasper. Description: Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Research in architecture series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022029272 (print) | LCCN 2022029273 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367181833 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032379555 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429059964 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Eisenman, Peter, 1932---Criticism and interpretation. Classification: LCC NA737.E33 J37 2023 (print) | LCC NA737.E33 (ebook) | DDC 720.92--dc23/eng/20220720 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029272 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029273 ISBN: 978-0-367-18183-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-37955-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-05996-4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9780429059964 Typeset in Sabon LT Std by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements

Endless Possibilities

vi ix x

1

PART I

21

1 Practicing Resistance

23

2 History

38

3 Time When

57

PART II

73

4 Ground

75

5 Figures

95

6 Event

113

Teaching Displacement

134

Index

152

Figures

Part I Eisenman/Robertson Architects. Perspective for University Art Museum, Long Beach, California, 1986–1988, ink on paper, 83 × 61 cm, DR1987:0859:374. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture21 Part II Peter D. Eisenman, Architect. Site plan for International Seminary of Design in the Area of Cannaregio-West, Venice, Italy 1978-1980. DR1991:0017:050. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture73 4.1 Approaches to urban planning developed during the Cannaregio Town Square project, 1978–1980. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Peter D. Eisenman, Architect. Notes and sketches about urban planning for International Seminary of Design in the Area of Cannaregio-West, Venice, Italy 1978–1980, black and pink ink on vellum paper, 42 × 29.6, DR1991: 0017:063)78 4.2 Destabilisations in Romeo and Juliet. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman/Robertson Architects. Axonometric for Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors 1985, reprographic copies with coloured adhesive, acrylic sheets, paper sheet 92 × 61 × 2 cm, DR1994:0148:249)81 4.3 Diagrams of scaling and superpositioning in Romeo and Juliet. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman/Robertson Architects. Site plans for Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors 1985, reprographic copies with ink, acrylic sheets, paper sheet, panel: 61 × 61 × 2)82 4.4 Topographic survey for University Art Museum. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman/Robertson Architects., Long Beach, California 1986-1988, 28 × 22 cm, DR1987:0859:277)85

Figures vii 4.5

5.1

5.2

5.3

5.4

6.1

6.2

6.3

Sketch plan for Monte Paschi Bank Competition. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects Renato Rizzi. Plan for Monte dei Paschi Bank International Competition for the Design of Piazza Matteotti, Sienna, Italy circa 1988, ink on yellow paper, 61 × 76 cm, DR1999:0040:006:028)88 Manuscript sheet with notes on Tokyo Opera House Competition. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman/Robertson Architects. Sketch and notes for Tokyo Opera House Competition, Tokyo, Japan 1985, reprographic copy, 28 × 43.2 cm, DR1999:0200:003)100 Sketch for Tokyo Opera House Competition. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman/Robertson Architects. Perspective for Tokyo Opera House Competition, Tokyo, Japan 1985, reprographic copy with pencil, 61 × 92 cm, DR1999: 0202.014)101 Site plan sketch of registrations for Banyoles Olympic Hotel. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Sketch for Banyoles Olympic Hotel, Banyoles, Spain 1989-1990, coloured ink on paper, 38.6 × 91.8 cm, DR1999:0045:002:029)104 Sketch section, Banyoles Olympic Hotel, indicating process registrations. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Sketch for Banyoles Olympic Hotel, Banyoles, Spain 1989, pencil and coloured ink on paper, 44.7 × 91.8 cm, DR1999:0045:003.041)108 Process sketch, Atocha 123 Hotel. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Sketch perspective for Atocha 123 Hotel, Madrid, Spain 1989-1993, pencil on translucent paper, 46 × 75.5 cm, DR1999:0053:002:001)122 Process sketch, corner detail, Atocha 123 Hotel. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Corner detail for Atocha 123 Hotel, Madrid, Spain 1989-1993, pencil on translucent paper, 61 × 66 cm, DR1999:0053:002:002)122 Process sketches, Yokohama International Port Competition. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Sketches for Yokohama International Port Terminal Design Competition, Yokohama, Japan 1994, pencil and coloured ink on paper, 22 × 28 cm, DR1999:0073:001:001)124

viii  Figures 6.4

6.5

6.6

Process axonometric sketch, Yokohama International Port Competition. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Axonometric for Yokohama International Port Terminal Design Competition, Yokohama, Japan 1994, reprographic copy with ink, 22 × 28 cm, DR1999:0073:001:010)125 Process diagram, The New National Museum of Korea. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Isometric for The New National Museum of Korea, Seoul, South Korea 1995, reprographic copy, 22.8 × 32.6 cm, DR1999:0074.001.001)126 Progress presentation panel, The New National Museum of Korea. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Plan and perspective for The New National Museum of Korea, Seoul, South Korea 1995, collage on translucent paper, 81.8 × 116.3 cm, DR1999:0074:005:007)127

Tables

2.1 Comparative mapping of elements across four historical writings52 4.1 Set out of architectural aspects examined in three projects by Peter Eisenman: Cannaregio Town Square (Venice, 1978), Romeo and Juliet (Verona, 1985), University Art Museum (Long Beach, 1986)91 6.1 Aspects of event in period writing of Peter Eisenman128 6.2 Comparison of event in Atocha 123 Hotel and Yokomana Port Competition projects by Peter Eisenman129 7.1 Matrix of terms in four of Peter Eisenman’s advanced architecture studios 145

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt thanks to my students. Since 2012 in studios and advanced seminars, they have questioned and reframed early formulations and as a consequence added energy to the research endeavour behind, and trajectory of, this book. To my colleagues both academic and professional in Canberra and around Australia in particular whose passion for architecture has maintained the momentum. This was especially important over 2020–2022 amid COVID-19 disruptions. To the executive staff at the University of Canberra who encouraged the research and provided material support at key moments including Faculty of Arts and Design Executive Dean and Professors Lyndon Anderson, Sally Burford, and Jason Bainbridge and Heads of School Associate Professor Andrew Mackenzie and Professor Charles Lemckert. I benefitted from the collegial and financial support of the University of Canberra’s Centre for Creative and Cultural Research and acknowledge my debts. The final stages of the book’s drafting and production were undertaken while on sabbatical. The leave from teaching and administration responsibilities and the financial support for securing image reproduction rights in particular were invaluable. I thank the University of Canberra Offices of the Vice Chancellor, Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and Innovation, and Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic for their commitment to the academic mission and for supporting my sabbatical. My thinking about Eisenman has been sharpened over the decades by many others as is recorded in chapter bibliographies. Preliminary versions of some material in this book were given as conference presentations and I thank the many organising committees for the opportunity to develop, present, and hone the in-progress ideas and to the respective peer reviewers for their critical and thoughtful suggestions. I benefitted from periods of archival research in 2015 and again in 2019 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montréal. The disruptions of COVID didn’t allow my return in 2021 as planned to further push the archival research and it is due to the enthusiasm, professional care, and efforts of CCA staff that the final selection and preparation of

Acknowledgements xi image files was made possible. I thank all those at the CCA who provided advice and support on the ground in Montréal and when working remotely and acknowledge Renata Guttman, Tim Klähn, Shira Atkinson, Caroline Dagbert, and their colleagues. This book would not have been possible without the generous and stimulating hospitality provided by many institutions over the ten years of its gestation and I acknowledge the individuals who made those institutional opportunities happen. My thanks to all for periods as visiting scholar at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning & Preservation, American Academy in Rome, and University of New South Wales City Futures Research Centre. I am indebted to Taylor & Francis for the enthusiasm with which the initial proposal for this project was received, the engagement from the Editor and reviewers who make detailed suggestions that contributed to shaping the direction of the book, and the editorial staff who have accompanied the development and production phases over the years. My special thanks to Editor Grace Harrison who was there at the beginning, Senior Publisher Francesca Ford, Senior Editorial Assistant Trudy Varcianna, and Editorial Assistants Aoife McGrath, Julia Pollacco, and Sophie Robinson. Commissioning Editor Caroline Church and Senior Editorial Assistant Varun Gopal at Taylor & Francis, along with their colleagues Neelu Sahu and Nancy Rebecca, saw it through the final production stages supported by a large team I did not meet directly but to whom I send my sincere thanks. My warm thanks to Jodette Kotz who sustained my efforts during the many years of academic prevarications and provocations and to whom this book is dedicated.

Endless Possibilities

I Something happened in the mid 1980s, during some occasion or other: not all at once but over a period of years as Eisenman’s extraordinary House series came to a natural resolution. This is the series running from House I (1967) through House El Even Odd (1980) to Fin d’Ou T Hou S (1983) and Guardiola House (1988). Or perhaps external conditions combined in ever diverse configurations to lead or pull Eisenman towards a set of architectural considerations different from those considered in the Houses. Of the many curiosities that provoked the chapters in this book, there is this sense that Eisenman sought in these years to consistently approach the very conditions of architecture’s possibility. Three opening clues in support of this observation can be claimed. Though I found the phrase late in writing this book, Sanford Kwinter articulates this idea of work on the conceptual grounds of the discipline. In attempting to reflect on what it is that is going on in the completed Aronoff Center for Design and Art in Cincinnati, Kwinter suggests that it is another instance of Eisenman working to create ‘the very possibility of architecture.’1 Kwinter goes on to elaborate on this suggestion without substantial expansion. Kwinter does this in part by referencing an unpublished lecture by Eisenman from that same year. In this lecture, Eisenman talks about building ‘… the possibility of building.’2 Towards the end of the period under review, and to turn to a second clue, Eisenman provides a succinct description of this underlying ambition. It occurs in an interview with Frédéric Levrat that appears in a special dossier published by L’architecture d’aujourd’hui in 1992. The dossier is illustrated by, though the text is largely without explicit reference to, period projects including the Olympic Hotel Banyoles, the Tokyo Opera House Competition entry, Alteka Office Building Tokyo, and a dedicated section on the then in-progress design for the Aronoff Center. In the interview with Levrat, Eisenman responds to a question about how he positions his project. Eisenman states: ‘There are always architects who are on the edge. I am trying to insert the possibility of what the edge means: disruption, dislocation, transposition, refiguration and re-establish DOI: 10.4324/9780429059964-1

2  Endless Possibilities it in the center.’3 We come back in the following sections in more detail to some of the variations and different manifestations this singular architecture might take, but for the moment it is worth highlighting certain of the terms involved as evoked or used in the interview. These include groundless figures and what he later characterises as figure-figure urbanism as distinct from a figure/ground urbanism. The idea of an architecture capable of holding certain terms in suspension is also evoked. This idea of a figure-figure urbanism, for instance, occupies Eisenman over many years and returns as an affirmation of the persistence of the notion in a 2012 presentation by the architect at a conference delivered under the banner of resistance.4 A third clue to support the use of the lens of possibilities in approaching Eisenman’s thinking comes in another interview. An inkling of what is at stake in the mid 1980s can be found in an interview between Jeffrey Kipnis and Eisenman. It is published in 1990 in an issue of A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) devoted to recent work of the office. Alongside essays by Tadao Ando, Kurt Forster, Ignasi de Solà-Morales, and Kipnis, the journal issue includes material on Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, Columbus Convention Center, Banyoles Olympic Hotel competition entry, and College of Design Architecture Art and Planning, University of Cincinnati. In the interview, Kipnis posits that the Wexner Center project, over the course of the project’s transformation from competition to construction, reveals a shift in Eisenman’s preoccupations from process to design. The former, Kipnis argues, is aligned with the House series, the latter triggered by projects from Cannaregio Town Square (Venice, 1978) and IBA Social Housing (Berlin, 1981–1985) onward. In response to this suggestion, Eisenman sets out another way to frame this period. It is worth citing at length this part of the interview and then work to unpack the various threads. In response to Kipnis, Eisenman states: … my work [since Berlin] has moved from process to aesthetic. At a certain point there was a crossover from a concern with the process to a concern with the object. The initial reason for the interest in process was the dislocation of the creative subject. Process was a way of saying that the tradition of the creative subject must be displaced. And so I worked with supposedly autonomous processes. Now I am more interested in the dislocation of the architectural object. Though it is true that my projects seem more “designed” now, it must also be said that the process in its manifestation as text continues to play an essential role in the work.5 Eisenman thus argues against design as the emergent aim. In its stead he reinforces a number of tactics to maintain or open heretofore repressed possibilities. These possibilities include a tactic of displacing the subject and dislocating the object in favour of the process per se. The indenture of the aesthetic is argued against. According to Eisenman, the beautiful does

Endless Possibilities 3 not cause one to think. The absence of a force causing one to pause is for Eisenman a critical failure or at minimum a disadvantage. Within the frame of the possible and possibilities, one can also include reference to what Eisenman formulated at various times as an architecture that renders or pushes into the realm of the non-dialectical a range of conditions that otherwise might be considered on the side of the classical, the modern, or the postmodern. Discussed below in relation to Eisenman’s essay ‘The End of the Classical,’ these include uncovering other kinds of situations that escape or abandon limits. These limits, in turn, are claimed by Eisenman to constrain architecture’s activities and ideas. These comprise limits imposed by the very process of classical/modern composition assumed to be bound to hierarchies and polarities including figure/ground and form/function. These in turn open up a series of questions that are approached in Eisenman’s writing, the projects of the office, and the student work emerging out of his university teaching. The exegetical task for the reader then becomes one of establishing the conditions of possibility of, for example, and taking Eisenman at his word, a ‘non-dialectical relationship between figure and ground, the possibility of producing groundless figures, of spacing as opposed to forming.’6 As he notes reflecting on certain of the consequences of such a stance, they include moving from description to creation. In this realm, it is a move from a solely analytic to constituting what Eisenman elsewhere calls a template of possibilities. In discussing the mechanisms explored in Rebstockpark, for instance, Eisenman characterises the reframing as a ‘displacement possibility.’7 To take another tack, Eisenman elsewhere describes his approach, or perhaps more accurately the consequences of his approach to architecture culture, as an unveiling. This occurs in a 1997 interview. In discussion with Alejandro Zaera-Polo and reflecting on recent work, Eisenman suggests that his projects ‘attempt to uncover what was previously repressed in the conventions of architecture…’; and a few pages later he reiterates this point, stating: ‘I do not think my projects are negative … Rather, they attempt to uncover what is repressed by the conventions or norms at any one time.’8 This project of revealing otherwise hidden or covered facets in turn can be claimed to lead to an opening up the architect’s practice to different conditions. Elsewhere, in ruminating on the twists and turns of the previous decade, Eisenman provides another description of what is at stake. In a discussion of the idea of anteriority, he writes: ‘Criticality evolves out of the possibility of both repetitions, to know what has gone before, and difference, to be able to change that history.’9 The ambition thus can also be said to track along by working on the origin and very conditions that establish architecture: conditions that may lead to change architecture’s anteriority: to open, that is, heretofore unimagined architectural qualities. A longer citation provides additional material to begin to suggest the relevance of possibilities as an interpretive frame for these concepts touched

4  Endless Possibilities on already including anteriority, repetition, and their differences. Eisenman continues in this same text, picking up the charge of ‘changing that history’ which requires precisely a more complex understanding of, and capacity to suspend, form generation decisions. If the idea of suspending form decisions is too extreme a characterisation, we can at least situate the stance on such decisions in the context of larger disciplinary concerns at the time. Eisenman continues to react to the moment: ‘Modelling blobs on the computer or random shapes by hand is flawed in that it does not take into account this anteriority.’ This is the necessary obligation for Eisenman of recognising and thus potentially impacting architecture’s past. He continues: ‘What these methods [computer generation, random hand generation] produce is a form of individual expression which on occasion has power to move, to motivate, and even to be critical, but which is a unique rather than a singular expression. Individual expression may always be different but it involves no repetition.’10 This necessary repetition, in hindsight, may also be about justifying the endless returns made in these years. To start to give some sense to this, let us turn to Kenneth Frampton, a key period protagonist.

II  Decomposition and Timelessness In an essay published in 1982, Frampton transcribes a sentiment not only in the air but also revealed in the work of architecture schools and on the boards in offices at the time. This is a period that describes itself as in crisis or at best outside the comforts of disciplinary and professional stabilities. Ruminating on what he characterises as a lost or vitiated vitality, Frampton arrives at a turn of phrase that resonates at this distance of some 40 years, a brooding reflection that captures a mood of disenchantment with modern architecture’s ability to deliver on the goods. To deliver, that is, on its social, technological, and eschatological premises. These, in turn, gathered ideas and devices that convention, according to one trajectory, locates in the wake of movements such as avant-gardism, neoplasticism, and rationalism. In developing his argument, Frampton turns to the work of Eisenman as providing a singular response to this state of affairs, discerning the latter’s period projects and writing a stance that is able to resist or at minimum repel the pull of a decomposing modernity. A modernity, for a despondent Frampton, that is literally becoming limp and in the process of turning liquid. This resistance force occurs at the level of the building as well as at the level of city ideas therein revealed. Frampton writes of paired lines accompanying Eisenman’s work. Not at all theoretical, for Frampton what stands out is Eisenman’s ability to simultaneously repel ‘to an equal degree, the deliquescence of a vulgar modernity and [at the same time] the recurrent, naïve nostalgia’11 for a supposed ideal future. To state differently Frampton’s suggestion, Eisenman’s project is deemed distinctive in its capacity to deny the seduction of stable architectures in favour of building propositions that demand multiple readings. At the

Endless Possibilities 5 same time, for Frampton, Eisenman’s work favours an equally ambiguous urban realm, without claiming that Eisenman has an idea of the city per se, though I’ll briefly reference later in this chapter one foray in that direction through studio teaching in those years. Eisenman allows, that is, for the possibility of urban scale speculations never achieving, let alone even wanting to imagine, the possibility of an urban totality. Specifically referencing Eisenman’s contemporary projects and writing at this key point of his argument, Frampton cites at length in support of his assessments an essay of Eisenman’s from 1980 dealing with the latter’s House XIa. Frampton here refers to Eisenman’s ‘Sandboxes: House XIa’ essay. Out of this essay, Frampton focuses on a statement of Eisenman’s suggesting that it is no longer possible at this present time to return to a belief in any ‘original totality’ or ‘unity.’12 The present age rather is one of partial fragments, that is, fragments that have no trace of a beginning point or hope of an original whole. Eisenman’s idea of partial objects continues to accompany him for the next 20 years, finding one manifestation around the question of the partial figure, a question returned to in Chapter 5. Frampton finds therein ‘a kind of perpetual “emancipation of dissonance” executed within the fissures of history.’13 What might be seen as another turn to aesthetic suspension, this emancipation, this freedom found in instabilities and positive ambiguities, will a few years later see Frampton sidling up to and siding with, Eisenman’s call for what the latter characterises as a not-classical architecture. As discussed in the closing section of this chapter, this later moment will find Eisenman and Frampton paired up at a 1984 conference specifically around these issues. The temperament discerned by Frampton, along with the clues proffered above to the frame of possibilities, can serve as an introduction and working place holder to the following reflections on concerns underlying Eisenman’s thinking over the period in the review of the mid 1970s to mid 1990s. With Frampton, whom one senses is particularly close to those fading lines of early twentieth century avant-gardism, there is a palpable feeling of being betrayed, already unmoored and awash, abandoned to the dangers opened up in the gapping ground rent by a history no longer linear and with no hope of retreat or recovery. Perhaps to counter this state, Frampton appeals to Eisenman as a contemporary witness, one uniquely placed to take up a different stance, and perhaps – returning to an underlying conjecture in this chapter – provide elements of a response to certain perceived crises in architecture and at the same time while equally and more essentially revealing still-to-be-realised possibilities. Taking Frampton at his word, that Eisenman provides one way forward, let us examine a pair of contemporary essays by Eisenman and see what if any evidence there is of such a resistance temperament. Both published in 1984, the essays are ‘The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Difference’14 and ‘The End of the Classical: the End of the Beginning, the End of the End,’15

6  Endless Possibilities While different points of view could be adopted, for our purposes two hypotheses can organise the analysis. The first hypothesis: that there are elements in each of the essays that support Frampton’s claim to see at play in Eisenman an architectural stance that effectively and perpetually resists the crutch of beginnings and ends, of a logic of a before and an after as symptoms of what Frampton calls vulgar modernity. As we’ll see, Eisenman acknowledges the difficulty of maintaining such a stance, referring to the tidal pull of ruptures in his own thinking and work, and for the discipline more generally. The second hypothesis: that this stance is predicated on a certain relationship to the past. In order to approach these hypotheses, the following questions provide a further lens for our analysis: By what means and in what forms is Eisenman’s thinking about architecture’s past – whether 18th-c Venetian palazzi, Charles Berry’s 19th-c proposal for the Houses of Parliament, or the impact of mid twentieth century existential crises precipitated by World War II – rendered in these essays? How might such processes for interrogating works from architecture’s past, and adoption of a position of what will be characterised as one of perpetual displacement, contribute to how one might think about the act of architecture today? It can be argued that Eisenman uses the phrase ‘the act of architecture’ to signal a whole program of activity including a critical rereading of the past, and an engagement with the ruptures that come with the different ‘sensibility’ announced in ‘The Futility of Objects.’16 This includes the realization around 1945 of the ‘potential extinction of the entire civilisation’ by means of nuclear conflict which for Eisenman shatters irrevocably ‘the classical and triadic condition of past, present, and future time.’17 For Eisenman in these years, if one can claim a state of crisis, it is one marked by ruptures: ruptures that Eisenman links to history and changing sensibilities.18 History, he asserts, is no longer continuous. In other words, writes Eisenman, ‘the objects and processes of the classical/modern continuity [running from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries] are no longer sustained by the present sensibility.’19 The fiction of stable histories is disrupted, and architecture is thus asked to seek out techniques appropriate to that condition: formal-spatial devices, and stances that embrace the conditions of possibility opened in those self-same ruptures. Such acts connote a condition of impossible return, as much for what they demarcate as to what they ‘invent.’ Turning to the art of invention is to reread Eisenman’s use of the term: to invent a space for architecture when confronted with the end of history. This includes hypothesising architecture as a system of differences. This is what Eisenman and others qualify as architecture as text, as distinct from architecture as image. 20 Different from a position that springs from a logic of moving beyond, and thus of beginnings and ends, Eisenman offers a counter practice outside of or different from such a beginnings-and-ends-dependent position. This is to adopt a state of perpetual freedom characterised by what

Endless Possibilities 7 Frampton describes, as noted earlier, an ‘emancipation [generated out] of dissonance.’21 This is a kind of freedom from those biases that Eisenman claims create limits in a classical/modernist – and by extension postmodernist – sensibility, limits that rely on a fiction of a time beyond and of a system of differences dependent on a logic of linear time that progresses or regresses relative to ends or beginnings. By way of difference, Eisenman advocates in ‘The End of the Classical’ essay for a logic situated in what he called a ‘time beyond history.’22 In order to more pointedly explore these claims, let us now look at the two essays. II.i  Decomposition or Techniques of Form Finding ‘The Futility of Objects,’ published in Harvard Architecture Review, is cast in the shadows of a period marked by multiple crises, or to use Eisenman’s term as noted above, of rupture. 23 What is at work behind or underneath the formulation of decomposition and the launch of a polemic towards a not-classical/not-modern architecture? What characterises such an architecture and what might that say about Eisenman’s attitude towards history? Raphael Moneo, in addition to taking up the challenge of elaborating on Frampton’s claims reviewed at the beginning of this chapter, provides another motivation for reading ‘The Futility of Objects.’ Moneo saw at the time in Eisenman’s text an ‘ambitious, brilliant, attractive program.’24 The comments are made in Moneo’s chapter on Eisenman in the former’s Theoretical Anxiety and specifically concern the notion of decomposition. Eisenman’s text provides an account of architectural conditions giving birth to their possibilities, staging the potential for architectural qualities and effects little considered or realised or articulated heretofore. As an explicit aspect of the architectural efforts under consideration, this finds a form of expression in Eisenman’s analysis of the differences between the floor plans of Palladio and Scamozzi. The combined consequence can be characterised as an apparatus that permits the architect to coordinate ensembles of formal effects into increasingly ambitious and complex texts, manifest in the writings as well as in the drawings and models. Henry Cobb, Chair of Architecture at the GSD in those same years (1983–1986), in thinking about that period some two and a half decades later described his intent to create disruptions. Perhaps that is another part of the origin story alongside Eisenman’s own claims to disrupt, displace, and uncouple the discipline from the fictions constraining its potential freedoms. Under the banner of decomposition, Eisenman sets out as a mode of reading the past that opens the conditions of possibility for new relationships of objects and processes more congruent with ‘the present … sensibility.’25 Eisenman describes, to this end, the key aim of the essay as ‘an attempt to sketch certain aspects of the negative of classical composition by deconstructing a series of buildings which are used as heuristic approximations

8  Endless Possibilities of [the current] sensibility.’26 Taking that statement at face value pushes one to ask what the present sensibility looks like. This in turn leads Eisenman to propose architectural categories that he associates with the not-classical and describe and provide examples of architectures that manifest this or that category. The categories are the pre-compositional, the composite, and the extra-compositional. Within the thematic focus of this chapter, I emphasise this latter category, that of the extra-compositional, which occupies, along with a set of diagrammatic analyses, key parts of Eisenman’s essay. The extra-compositional is distinguished for Eisenman by a number of qualities. These include the following six qualities or aspects that together can be claimed to contribute to bracketing techniques of what Moneo saw as decomposition’s ambitious program. They also might realise Cobb’s retrospectively stated ambition to support and even provoke disruptions. The qualities of the extra-compositional include the following: (a) There is no recourse to an originating type. See Eisenman’s reading of the plans of Palazzo Surian and Fabrica Fino. 27 (b) There is no stable hierarchy of formal-spatial relationships. See again his analysis of Palazzo Surian. (c) There is no logic of fragments that might imply an ideal but absent whole or an originary ‘completeness,’ rather there is a condition of partial fragments. 28 (d) This not-classical order encourages the simply sequential (one after the other) or successional conditions that suspend or resist progressive time (see Eisenman’s analysis of the plan of Scamozzi’s Fabrica Fino compared to Palladio’s plan for Palazzo della Torre). 29 (e) Certain architectural works are multivalent, creating fluctuations in reading of implied and actual volume such that no single reading dominates. See, for example, Eisenman’s reading of the north façade of Giuseppe Terragni’s Giuliani Figerio Apartment Block and variances between planar and volumetric qualities.30 (f) There are other qualities described by Eisenman, ones whose interpretation cannot be reconciled by recourse to stable polarities such as symmetry/asymmetry or plane/volume. These qualities are distinguished by an oscillation native to the work, ones that Eisenman will later in his career refer to as states of blurring.31 The ambition throughout the essay, to take up a more recent synthetic phrase by Eisenman, could be claimed to ‘reawaken history.’32 It is to reawaken architecture’s past with the intent specifically not to arrive at any stable, decidable interpretation but instead to accompany what Eisenman calls the act of the architect as one of perpetual resistance to temptations of hierarchy, centrality, and closure, all with an aim to introduce instability, multivalence, and openness. II.ii Timeless, Objectless, Arbitrary: Conditions of a Not-Classical Architecture In the same year as ‘The Futility of Objects’ appears, Eisenman publishes ‘The End of the Classical’ in Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal. The title of the essay says it all. Or does it? The subtitle does tell a bit more:

Endless Possibilities 9 ‘the End of the Beginning, the End of the End.’ The resistance to what Eisenman at the time calls centrisms preoccupies him in these years and this essay works through a group of centrisms or fictions. In a similar manner but different from ‘The Futility of Objects’ essay, ‘The End of the Classical’ also starts with remarks about the problem of continuity, another sign of the predicament at hand. Writing some years later, Jeffrey Kipnis senses Eisenman’s interest in engaging the problem of continuity. In an interview with Eisenman published in 1990, the two discuss a range of continuities that Eisenman works to destabilise or dislocate with the consequent outcome of opening up or revealing different architectural conditions. In discussing the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts and Fine Arts Library, for example, Kipnis suggests Eisenman’s project has an effect of distracting or turning away from what he calls a ‘nostalgia of place’ such that the project opens up ‘the open-ended possibilities of place.’33 Place, in other words, is not stable and knowable. This question of nostalgia for place or context will come back, alongside a critical attitude towards nostalgias of meaning and use. Returning to ‘The End of the Classical,’ in the essay Eisenman suggests that there are three continuities that together demarcate the state of what he calls ‘the classical’ and that a specific stance on each in relation to thinking architecture differently needs to be adopted. By the classical, he refers to an abstract system of relations in place since the sixteenth century and demarcated by certain continuities or fictions. According to Eisenman, the three fictions are representation, reason, and history. He further characterises the classical as that which is distinguished by several conditions, including a logic of origins, of ends, and ‘the process of composition’ itself.34 Eisenman then goes on to refer to the qualities that might distinguish what he calls a ‘not-classical’ architecture. The dialectic being staged calls for a temperament different from a succession of styles such as ‘classicism, neoclassicism, romanticism, modernism, postmodernism.’35 An underlying proposition is that beyond stylistic differences, one is better off thinking about architectural culture as ‘a system of relations’ that are beyond style. For the purposes of our focus on possibilities, key aspects of a notclassical architecture can be identified. Such factors include the following: (a) Modification replaces composition and transformation.36 (b) Invention of a ‘non-dialectical, non-directional, non-goal oriented process’ such that architectural form is imagined such that it is not ‘a strictly practical device’ but by some means is itself a place of invention. (c) The architect-historian is positioned to read the architectural object as text.37 To frame the work differently, in this essay Eisenman proposes to conceptualise as well as set out markers for work on ‘the act of architecture’ per se. Within the act of architecture, he continues: ‘Architecture becomes text rather than object when it is conceived and presented as a system of differences rather than as an image or a dialectical presence.’38 (d) Finally, Eisenman claims the purpose of the ‘Futility of Objects’ essay includes transposing a number of ideas – graft, motivation, decomposition – ‘from a purely analytic framework to

10  Endless Possibilities a program for work.’39 This is a further demonstration of an appeal to a whole program of work, the underlying plane of work on architecture’s conditions of possibility. Eisenman concludes ‘The End of the Classical’ by suggesting that the architect’s aim is to invent the conditions for a perpetual present, one without obligation or burden towards either an ‘idealised past’ or maintaining endless naïve hope in a never-to-arrive future. In this, Eisenman falls into Frampton’s positive trap of resisting repeating what the latter identified as that naïve nostalgia as discussed earlier. In nostalgia’s place, Eisenman’s project aims to open what he characterises as ‘an other “timeless” space of invention.’40 The space of invention to be opened is one that contains a relation to certain past architectures. Needing to find forms and spaces, however, calls up the problem of design technique. In an essay discussed below, Eisenman suggests a not-classical architecture as one that no longer manifests history, reason, or the present/the contemporary and rather may appropriately be described as an ‘architecture as is.’ I return to this below. From a certain point of view, then, Eisenman’s position is radically opposed to ‘the ideology of the zeitgeist.’41 In that light, his position adds a terrible burden on the architect that is also a terrible freedom: the luxury of believing one is released from the past as well as released from the compact of a future time. For Eisenman, the classical, modern, and postmodern alike are ‘trapped in the illusion of the eternity of their own time.’42 Eisenman’s attitude, whether leading or following Frampton, is exactly one of resistance to the ‘illusion’ of being trapped in one’s own time. In this regard, ‘The Futility of Objects’ essay can also be claimed to perform ultimately a kind of work on ‘the ideology of the zeitgeist.’ From this point of view, and to return to Frampton’s contemporaneous sense, Eisenman provides a way to keep things open endlessly, witnessing events as they unfolded. II.iii ‘I have had trouble coming to terms with writing about Eisenman’s work.’ Thus begins an essay by Robin Evans which appeared in print shortly after a 1985 exhibition on Eisenman’s Fin d’Ou T Hou S at the Architectural Association.43 A rare secondary source on the two essays touched on above, it is appropriate to refer to Evans as a way into some final observations before returning to the hypotheses that opened this chapter. Evans is not complimentary, to say the least, at least as regards the object of the exhibition. Evans describes the Fin d’Ou T Hou S project as ‘disappointing.’44 His disappointment resides initially around the apparent exhaustion of the techniques, or perhaps positive fulfilment of the ideas trialled in the Houses. Evans briefly discusses ‘The Futility of Objects’ and ‘The End of the Classical’ essays in getting there, without however expanding on their impact or reach.45 In his comments on the two essays, he supports a primary interpretation that sees in the two Eisenman essays

Endless Possibilities 11 evidence of a singular stance. Both essays, writes Evans, ‘involve the construction and maintenance of positions, the determining of a stance.’46 In this way, the essay provides further justification to a reading of Eisenman in these years as all about positioning, opening, and catalysing. In this sense, given the extent and depth of that moment of ruptures, a larger study should necessarily reveal additional lines of influence and attraction to the theme of possibilities. Three lines stand out and concern relationships to Eisenman’s teaching, to period work of his office, and to Aldo Rossi. As regards the relationship to teaching, while Eisenman is writing and publishing the ‘Decomposition’ article, he is in the middle of a three-year visiting professorship from 1983 to 1985 at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.47 Some student work arising out of period studios is the object of a public exhibition and included in a monograph. Is there evidence of a preoccupation with possibilities in the teaching materials and student work? These questions are returned to in the closing chapter of this book. As regards the relationship to the office, while the two essays that have been the target of reflections in his chapter are under development and eventual publication, a number of projects are in parallel underway in the office. These include IBA Social Housing (Berlin, 1981–1985), Wexner Center for the Visual Arts and Fine Arts Library (Columbus, 1983–1989), Fin d’Ou T Hou S (1983), and Romeo and Juliet (Verona, 1984–1985). Is there evidence of Eisenman’s conceptual preoccupations on display in period projects, completed variously by Eisenman/Robertson or Eisenman Architects? To start to respond to the question, two projects could be examined to see if there is any relation – complimentary, antagonistic, neutral - to the preoccupations discussed above. Tokyo Opera House and Fin D’Ou T Hou S in their claimed resistance to stabilities might lead this inquiry: the former via its deployment of scaling and tracing as form-space generation techniques and the latter via a further variation of the cube investigations. A number of factors that would inform a review include the following: (a) a consideration of Eisenman’s use of partial figures; (b) the emphatic or unapologetic embrace of discontinuities. Is that what he was thinking in ‘The End of the Classical’ essay by the term ‘arbitrary’?48 On this factor, Eisenman puts on notice interpretive responses that might look to turn to the comfort of the evocation of an architecture with qualities of timelessness (without ends or beginnings), one that is non-representational (objects are futile) and artificial. (c) Evans provides a clue to all this. In his investigation of Fin d’Ou T Hou S, Evans believes he finds evidence that Eisenman has insinuated ideas of movement ‘into the speechless immobility of the object … [and that such ideas of movement] give it an unworldly animation that takes the place of the meaning he [Eisenman] made such efforts to evict all those years ago.’49 The suggestion that animation supplants meaning is only one of several ideas worth tracking here. Finally, as regards the relationship to Aldo Rossi, evidence both circumstantial and direct suggests it is appropriate to explore Eisenman’s relation

12  Endless Possibilities to Rossi to further understand what is at stake in framing the analysis in terms of the trope of possibilities. In these same years, for example, Eisenman publishes his Editor’s Introduction to the English language version of Rossi’s, The Architecture of the City. Under the title ‘The Houses of Memory: The Text of Analogue,’ Eisenman’s essay is at least on the surface worth a close reading in its own right.50 Topics fall more on the side of the autobiographical, of temperament and sensibility, and of the architecthistorian’s stance than on the side of the project. One should interrogate the nature of the influence and/or impact of Rossi on Eisenman at this moment of swerves in his office and his teaching. II.iv To wrap this section up, let’s consider another episode in that eventful year. It is still 1984 and Ricardo Bofill, Eisenman, Frampton, and Edward Jones are brought together at a conference in Canada. The conference is Banff Session ‘84, a meeting that itself sought to confront different positions to see what might be created out of their coming together. In addition to separate presentations, an abbreviated transcript of discussions between the four along with audience comments is published as ‘The Transcripts.’ Echoing sentiments Frampton already made in 1982 referenced at the opening of this chapter, in ‘The Transcripts’ Frampton refers to the time as ‘a dark period’ with specific reference to the shadows cast in the prospect of nuclear conflict. Describing his own mood as ‘pessimistic,’ Frampton states that what he thinks is needed in such a context ‘is to create sensibility and strong nerves [in order] to continue with the possibility of cultivating the species [referring here to the profession of architecture] under very adverse conditions.’51 If we take this seriously, Frampton ties his hope on someone with a specific sensibility and nerve. Frampton goes on to articulate a difference which might be useful for providing another point of clarification to close off these meditations. While discussing the ‘Ohio State building’ – Eisenman’s office has recently been announced as the 1983 competition winners for what will become the Wexner Center – Frampton states: ‘I often feel that one of the differences that divides Peter and myself is the degree to which I am concerned or I have become more concerned with the capacity of certain architects to build in a significant way, whereas Peter is more concerned with the conceptual ground of the act [of the architect] in the first place.’52 Accepting Frampton’s claim that Eisenman’s contribution is at the level of conceptual grounds, the architect’s stance rendered in ‘The Futility of Objects’ and ‘The End of the Classical’ essays might be heralded as containing a program of endless possibilities. To call out Eisenman’s position as demonstrating ‘strong nerves’ and sufficiently focused on the side of conceptual grounds is perhaps a not unreasonable place to position oneself in times of rupture.

Endless Possibilities 13 That this program is marked by a desirable or at minimum intentional indeterminacy is provisionally found in at least two planes of activity that correspond to the key terms that can be taken as abbreviations of the formal and theoretical preoccupations in the two essays: decomposition, timelessness. On the one hand, it is about a plane of form generation or space discovery; on the other hand, it concerns a plane that functions to position one’s thinking outside of, and different to, ideas of beginnings and ends, outside and different from time as continuous. The one can be claimed to be revealed through what Eisenman called on as an open process of decomposition. The other plane might then be located through a temperament that gladly embraces constant imbalance, disruption, and dislocation given the rupture of history. This other plane of activity might be rendered by a state of perpetual resistance that is intended to maintain a ‘timeless’ space of invention or discovery, one that requires a radical engagement with the present. This is to contribute to opening up the conditions of possibility for architecture’s capacity to resist that state of dissipation that so shook Frampton in 1982: a capacity which favours the multivalent, the blurred, the positively ambivalent. Together, these work to repel the many nostalgias Frampton sets up, including nostalgia for meaning, for a place, and his plea to Eisenman to stand as a counter witness. In ‘The Transcripts,’ the following is attributed to Eisenman as a summary of a not-classical architecture and can serve appropriately as the last word in this section. Eisenman states: ‘It is no longer a certification of experience, a simulation of history, reason or reality in the present. Instead, it [a not-classical architecture] may more appropriately be described as an architecture as is - … a representation of itself… [an] architecture as a process of inventing an artificial past and futureless present.’53 At that moment in the mid 1980s, and perhaps still today, Eisenman’s activity can be claimed to provide one version of a practice of resistance, a practice capable of repelling architecture’s vulgar capacity to imagine something like a non-linear time, or a critique of its inability to imagine something different from a linear time. Instead, we are left with an insistent plea for the present, and an architecture as is with all its possibilities, a rare and perhaps one of the few viable acts of architecture that remain. This idea of a practice of resistance is further considered in Chapter 1.

III  The Paradox of Continuity54 III.i Before moving to some closing observations and then to a description of what follows in the remainder of the book, we turn to Enric Miralles. In a kind of prose poem reflection published in 1997, Miralles Eisenman’s key contribution to the discipline of architecture is the latter’s ‘search for the place where his works are possible.’55 By this qualification, one senses that for Miralles,

14  Endless Possibilities Eisenman is enamoured not with appearance and image but rather with ‘the project that makes them appear.’56 Thus, one task is to respect the singularity or logic of each text and each project in order to begin to understand the aspects of the logics that contribute to their appearance. There is no paradox in Eisenman’s head-on take up of the topic of continuity in the mid 1980s. It is a premonition of things to come: of shifts in focus and interest. In part, the foregoing attempts to contribute to revealing certain ideas and architectural devices that may be claimed to resist ‘a metaphysic of embodiment at any cost,’ to reference a phrase of Jeffrey Kipnis.57 Such an ambition is made in order to be in a position to found a counter position. This counter position is intended to at least in spirit find or found a plane where an other architecture is possible. This is perhaps an aspect of the love that Miralles describes. Kipnis’ plea to resist a metaphysic of embodiment, to return to our earlier appraisal, appears in an essay that considers the consequence of certain actions of Eisenman as distinct from other speculative architectural practices. In this optic, the task is to isolate any number of architectural effects, sensitive to their freedom from an outside narrative of ends and beginnings. The set of actions released in the writings, lectures, drawings, models, built objects, and settings together create a momentum that contributes to (re) constituting lines of force. These lines of force are so conceived and constituted that architectural matters can be allowed to move in unknown directions in a motion situated in the wake of other recognisable responses. This is a motion that at the same time opens up heretofore unknown states. This interpretation accepts the unconsolidated swirl of ‘agitative hypotheses’ that the following chapters touch on. It is to Kwinter that one owes this qualification of the Eisenmanian project, a project that sees Kwinter in a retrospective glance back at the first 30 years of Eisenman’s production as if from no distance at all.58 III.ii This chapter examines the specific sensibility at work and the utility ascribed to, and deployed towards, specific instances of what Eisenman calls in ‘The Futility of Objects’ an extra compositional approach, one different from approaches aligned with classicism and modernism. The terms decomposition and timeless architecture provide a shorthand for mapping the thinking at work and may prove of resonance in considering the materials in the subsequent chapters. A constant effort is made when considering the writing and design projects of the period to identify and follow shifts in attention, all the while acknowledging they won’t be tied to a single trajectory but many. Such shifts, or swerves in focus, in turn can be claimed to result in redirections in architectural energies, assuming such redirections spring from or be led

Endless Possibilities 15 by pivots in attention. Alternatively, a change in space generation strategies or design techniques could be equally claimed to be influential in shaping the object of focus. These in turn can be said to delimit the potential impact on practice, on theory, and on education. The various chapters that follow then can be said to touch on one or more of these trajectories. This book attempts to illuminate and illustrate conceptual and formal activities on display in, and at work through, Eisenman’s writing and projects between 1975 and 1995. Some reference is made that said to materials both primary and secondary outside these neat chronological limits. In Chapter 3, for example, some of the material prepared for the Anytime conference (held 1997, published 1998) is used. The closing chapter, a sort of afterword which considers aspects of Eisenman’s studio teaching, examines materials from the early 2010s. In terms of structure, following this opening chapter that addresses the broad theme of possibilities, the book is organised into two main parts. The first examines a limited range of thematic frames – resistance, history, time – in a focused look at the writings of Eisenman from the period and secondary commentary. This first part of the book begins with a chapter that identifies early concerns, from Eisenman’s dissertation to the House series of projects read through the notion of resistance. Then there is an examination of the architectural thinking of Eisenman with an analysis in the following chapters of two key concerns that occupied him in the middle period (1980s, 1990s): the idea and practice of history as analysis; and the question of architecture’s relation to time rendered through a series of notions including presence, absence, figure and ground, the interstitial, and partial figure. An overarching trope of temporality specific to the modernist project is argued to describe the period. The second part of the book contains three chapters organised chronologically according to major thematic concerns and formal investigations found in Eisenman’s work from the 1980s and 1990s. The chapters individually and together propose to amplify the arguments set out in Part I and examine projects that cross parallel preoccupations clustered around the terms ground, figure, and event. A final chapter considers aspects of Eisenman’s studio teaching and a sensibility that favours positive displacement. Individual chapters in the online version of the book open with an abstract to aid readers in identifying specific themes and references. A bibliography is provided at the end of each chapter in a similar spirit of supporting focused reading around areas of specific interest.

Notes 1 Sandford Kwinter, “Can One Go Beyond Piranesi? (Liner Notes for a Building Revisited),” in Twelve Authors in Search of a Building. The Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, ed. Cynthia D Davidson (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996), 155.

16  Endless Possibilities 2 Peter Eisenman, a lecture at Rice University in February 1996 cited by Kwinter, “Can One Go Beyond Piranesi?,” 156. 3 Peter Eisenman, “Entretien: Du processus à la presence [Interview: from process to presence],” with Frédéric Levrat, L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui 279 (February 1992): 105. 4 For a reference to figure figure urbanism, see Eisenman’s contribution to the 2012 symposium held at the Princeton School of Architecture on 9 November 2012. A video recording of the day’s events can be found at: accessed 06-08-2021, https://vimeo.com/channels/petereisenmansymposium/videos. A reference to the ambition to contribute to a figure figure urbanism can be found in Part 1 of 4 vimeo recordings, about an hour into the session recording. 5 Peter Eisenman and Jeffrey Kipnis, “Interview: Peter Eisenman with Jeff Kipnis”, A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 232 (January 1990): 173. 6 Peter Eisenman, “A Conversation with Peter Eisenman,” with Alejandro Zaera-Polo, El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997): 20. 7 Peter Eisenman, “Unfolding Events. Frankfurt Rebstockpark and the Possibility of a New Urbanism,” in Written into the Void: Selected Writings, 1990-2004 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 15. 8 Eisenman, “A Conversation with Peter Eisenman,” 9, 15. 9 Peter Eisenman, “Diagrams of Anteriority,” in Diagram Diaries (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 37. 10 Eisenman, “Diagrams of Anteriority,” 37. 11 Kenneth Frampton, “Formation and Transformation,” in De Stijl: 1917-1931, Visions of Utopia, ed. Mildred Friedman (Oxford: Phaidon, 1982), 120. Cambridge Dictionary provides the following definition for deliquescence: noun. 1. the process of becoming liquid as a result of absorbing moisture from the air; 2. The process of melting or turning liquid. Accessed 02-07-2021, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ deliquescence 12 Peter Eisenman, “Sandboxes: House XIa,” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism): Special Issue Peter Eisenman 112 (January 1980): 223. 13 Frampton, “Formation and Transformation,” 123. 14 Peter Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Difference,” Harvard Architecture Review, no. 3 (Winter 1984). The essay is reprised in Peter Eisenman, Inside Out Selected Writings 1964-1988 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 169–187. The original version published in Harvard Architecture Review is referenced in these notes. 15 Peter Eisenman, “The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, the End of the End,” Perspecta. The Yale Architectural Journal, no. 21 (1984). The essay is reprinted in a slightly different format and without the original illustrations in Peter Eisenman, Inside Out Selected Writings 1964-1988 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 152–168. The original version published in Perspecta is referenced in these notes. 16 Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects,” 65. 17 Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects,” 65, 66. 18 Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects,” see page 81, note 8 for a discussion of a rupture in sensibility that occurred relative to the presumed continuity embracing classicism and modernism from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. 19 Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects,” 67. 20 A different study should track the notion of text in Eisenman’s writing in these years. 21 Frampton, “Formation and Transformation,” 123. 22 Peter Eisenman, “End of the Classical,” 169.

Endless Possibilities 17 23 Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects,” 70. 24 Raphael Moneo, Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects, trans. Gina Carino (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2004), 174. 25 Eisenman, “Futility of Objects,” 67. 26 Eisenman, “Futility of Objects,” 67. 27 Eisenman, “Futility of Objects,” 70. 28 Eisenman, “Futility of Objects,” 70. 29 Eisenman, “Futility of Objects,” 71, 72. 30 Eisenman, “Futility of Objects,” 73. 31 Eisenman, “Futility of Objects,” 74. See also Peter Eisenman, Blurred Zones: Investigations of the Interstitial. Eisenman Architects, 1988-1998 (New York: Monacelli Press, 2003). 32 Peter Eisenman, “Preface,” in Palladio Virtuel, eds. Peter Eisenman with Matt Roman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). Accessed 02-07-2021, https://eisenmanarchitects.com/Palladio-Virtuel 33 Jeffrey Kipnis, “Interview: Peter Eisenman with Jeff Kipnis”, A+U (Architecture and Urbanism), no. 232 (January 1990): 173. 34 Eisenman, “End of the Classical,” 156, n. 5. 35 Eisenman, “End of the Classical,” 155. 36 Eisenman, “End of the Classical,” 170. 37 Eisenman, “End of the Classical,” 171. 38 Eisenman, “End of the Classical,” 171, n. 22. 39 Eisenman, “End of the Classical,” 168, 169, n. 19. 40 Eisenman, “End of the Classical,” 172. 41 Eisenman, “End of the Classical,” 163. 42 Eisenman, “End of the Classical,” 163, emphasis in the original. 43 Robin Evans, “Not to be used for wrapping purposes,” AA Files 10 (Autumn 1985): 68. 44 Evans, “Not to be used,” 74. 45 Evans, “Not to be used,” 68. 46 Evans, “Not to be used,” 68. 47 A selection of student work, opening remarks by Henry Cobb, then Chair of Architecture, Graduate School of Design at the time of Eisenman’s appointment, and essays by those who assisted Eisenman in delivery of the studios was published in 1986 as Investigations in Architecture: Eisenman Studios at the GSD, ed. Jonathan Jova Marvel and Margaret Reeve (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1986). 48 Eisenman, “The End of the Classical,” 172. 49 Evans, “Not to be used,” 74. 50 Peter Eisenman, “Editor’s Introduction. The Houses of Memory: The Texts of Analogue,” in Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1982), 2–11. 51 The Alberta Association of Architects has hosted since 1956 a conference called the Banff Session. In the mid 1980s, Banff Session ‘84 included presentations by Ricardo Bofill, Eisenman, Kenneth Frampton and Edward Jones and a portion of discussions, along with audience contributions, was published as “The Transcripts,” Section a 2, no. 3/4 (September 1984), with the cited reference on page 21. 52 “The Transcripts,” 22. 53 “The Transcripts”, 26, emphasis in the original. 54 I have borrowed from Paul Motian the phrase ‘paradox of continuity’. It is the subtitle of the fourth volume of the five-volume Paul Motian On Broadway. The Great American Songbook (München: Winter & Winter, 2015),

18  Endless Possibilities CD-ROM. Though I’ve not read an explanation of the term, in the case of Motian one might surmise the phrase alludes to the music producer’s revival through transformation of music from Broadway’s past. 55 Enric Miralles, “I, II, III, IV … IX … etc …” El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997): 171. 56 Miralles, “I, II, III, IV …” 171. 57 Jeffrey Kipnis, “Toward a New Architecture,” in A Question of Qualities. Essays in Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2013), 345, note 15. 58 Sanford Kwinter, “The Eisenman Wave,” in Eisenman Architects: Selected and Current Works, ed. Stephen Dobney (Mulgrave, Australia: The Image Publishing Group Pty Ltd, 1995), 7.

Bibliography Eisenman, Peter and Alejandro Zaera-Polo. “A Conversation With Peter Eisenman.” El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997): 6–20. Eisenman, Peter and Frédéric Levrat. “Entretien: Du processus à la presence [Interview: From Process to Presence].” L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui 279 (February 1992): 100–108. Eisenman, Peter and Jeffrey Kipnis. “Interview: Peter Eisenman with Jeff Kipnis.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 232 (January 1990): 170–182. Eisenman, Peter, Ricardo Bofill, Kenneth Frampton, Edward Jones, and anonymous. “The Transcripts.” Section a 2, no. 3/4 (September 1984): 20–26. Eisenman, Peter. “Diagrams of Anteriority.” In Diagram Diaries, edited by Peter Eisenman, 36–43. London: Thames and Hudson, 1999. Eisenman, Peter. “Editor’s Introduction. The Houses of Memory: The Texts of Analogue.” In The Architecture of the City, edited by Aldo Rossi, 2–11. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1982. Eisenman, Peter. “Sandboxes: House XIa.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism): Special Issue Peter Eisenman 112 (January 1980): 223–227. Eisenman, Peter. “The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, the End of the End.” Perspecta 21 (1984): 154–173. Eisenman, Peter. “The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Difference.” Harvard Architecture Review 3 (Winter 1984): 64–81. Eisenman, Peter. “Unfolding Events. Frankfurt Rebstockpark and the Possibility of a New Urbanism.” In Written into the Void: Selected Writings, 1990-2004, 12–18. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Eisenman, Peter. Blurred Zones: Investigations of the Interstitial. Eisenman Architects, 1988-1998. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2003. Evans, Robin. “Not to Be Used for Wrapping Purposes.” AA Files 10 (Autumn 1985): 68–78. Frampton, Kenneth. “Formation and Transformation.” In De Stijl: 1917-1931, Visions of Utopia, edited by Mildred Friedman, 99–123. Oxford: Phaidon, 1982. Kipnis, Jeffrey. “Toward a New Architecture.” In Jeffrey Kipnis, A Question of Qualities. Essays in Architecture, 287-320, 342–346. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2013. Kwinter, Sanford. “Can One Go Beyond Piranesi? (Liner Notes for a Building Revisited).” In Twelve Authors in Search of a Building. The Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, edited by Cynthia D Davidson, 152–163. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996.

Endless Possibilities 19 Kwinter, Sanford. “The Eisenman Wave.” In Eisenman Architects: Selected and Current Works, edited by Stephen Dobney, 7–15. Mulgrave, Australia: The Image Publishing Group Pty Ltd, 1995. Marvel, Jonathan Jova and Margaret Reeve, eds. Investigations in Architecture: Eisenman Studios at the GSD. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1986. Miralles, Enric. “I, II, III, IV … IX … etc …” El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997): 168–171. Moneo, Raphael. Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects, translated by Gina Carino. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2004.

Part I

 isenman/Robertson Architects. Perspective for University Art Museum, Long E Beach, California, 1986–1988, ink on paper, 83 × 61 cm, DR1987:0859:374. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture

DOI: 10.4324/9780429059964-2

1

Practicing Resistance

1.1  1.1.1  Displace, Disrupt In writings and interviews from the mid 1970s through to the mid 1990s, Eisenman frequently describes his approach to architecture in a manner that emphatically or indirectly assumes a posture of resistance. Various formulations and terms are used to characterise what can be called a practice of resistance. Displacement is one such term used for instance in his 1988 essay ‘En Terror Firma: In Trails of Grotextes.’ In this text, the architectural act is broadly framed as one of displacement. In that essay’s formulation, what is to be displaced is precisely how architecture conceptualises itself.1 Here is Eisenman most baldly on this proposition: ‘In order to achieve the necessary internal displacement, architecture would have to displace the former ways of conceptualising itself.’2 From this optic, the effort of the architect is to be one that engages the conceptual structure of architecture per se. The remark recurs in the context of a reference to Eisenman’s project for Carnegie Mellon Research Institute (1988–1989) and more is said about that project below. What kind of things might be entailed in what Eisenman calls a ‘necessary internal displacement’? What things and which relationships are being abandoned or denied along the way? In ‘En Terror Firma,’ Eisenman identifies four conditions or states with the potential capacity to displace an architecture still aligned with representing an overcoming of nature. It is precisely this claim that an overcoming of nature is no longer architecture’s main concern that places Carnegie Mellon in the picture. It is that project specifically that challenges Eisenman to consider what an overcoming of knowledge would be for architecture. The four conditions identified by Eisenman concern a variation on the idea of the architect and a relation to design processes that allow, he suggests, for ‘otherness or secondarity’ to appear. These are the initial qualities called out and this can be taken as a first aspect. A further aspect concerns DOI: 10.4324/9780429059964-3

24  Part I the shift away from polarities and hierarchies (e.g. structure and ornamentation, form and function) to a position open to what Eisenman calls ‘twoness.’3 By ‘twoness,’ Eisenman appears to imply a state that embraces uncertainty and blurs differences between, say, presence and absence in favour of a complicated state of twoness. It is somewhat like a both/and. According to Eisenman, a third aspect or condition for displacing how architecture conceives itself is that of ‘betweenness’4 which resonates with the notion of architecture as a weak image. This in turn develops into ideas of blurring discussed in Chapter 5. As discussed in the ‘En Terror Firma’ essay, a fourth aspect with the potential to displace is that contained in a notion of interiority. This notion must be understood, however, not as an inside or as inhabitation. For Eisenman, rather, the term interiority is used to describe a condition that denies the previously thought-to-be natural condition of place or enclosure in favour of a different state. Another term that signals an overarching temperament of resistance in architecture is that of disruption. The term, for example, is used retrospectively by Eisenman in a 2016 interview with Vladimir Belogolovsky. Over a discussion of shifting interests, and in a conversation touching on an architect’s assumed interest in well-crafted buildings marked by beautiful details, Eisenman interrupts the interviewer. Eisenman states that he himself is not focused on such matters. He is not interested in the problem of beauty for the architect, because for Eisenman beauty doesn’t resist and because, again according to Eisenman, beauty doesn’t disrupt and force one to think. Eisenman writes: ‘Beauty does not disrupt anything. If you see something beautiful, you don’t pay enough attention to it. Beauty, because of its very nature does not demand close attention.’5 Though Eisenman does not further develop the theme of disruption in this interview, the topic of disruption as an attribute of practice of resistance is illustrated in other examples. This includes in the project description for Carnegie Mellon Research Institute where it is foregrounded. Charged with developing proposals for a new Carnegie Mellon Research Institute that architecturally expresses the knowledge revolution, I return to this below in Section II of this chapter. If we consider Eisenman’s writing as shaped not in closed figures but as non-linear fragments of an open-ended theory, then we are allowed to develop several potential ways to summarise them as revealing different strands of a resistance practice, none cumulative nor chronological in any simple manner. Accepting such a stance, one’s attempt at a synthetic treatment from the lens of resistance might be to try to read the theoretical work as identical to such a practice. There is also a collateral implication that resulting architectural objects bear a trace of this stance. The exercise would then be to track the shifts in point of view or thematic emphasis as they accompany and inform Eisenman’s contemporaneous design projects. This approach would see Eisenman’s thinking as positively sliding across a broad web of devices, theoretical networks, notions, shapes, and techniques

Practicing Resistance 25 in a kind of perpetual oscillation renewed and varied on multi-year frequencies. Such a framework is one quality of this period: neither additive nor evolutionary and that we label as signalling a practice of resistance. 1.1.2 Commentators A number of commentators have remarked on this resistance stance. In order to further broaden the demonstration of this quality of resistance in Eisenman’s work, let us turn to a select group of commentators and critical theorists who have discerned various manifestations at play. As discussed in the opening chapter, Kenneth Frampton as early as 1982 calls out Eisenman as holding a line that operates to repel or resist a dissolving modernism.6 A few years later, Frampton again offers up Eisenman and the work of the office as proffering a panacea to ongoing crises. In an essay by Frampton titled ‘Tre opere recenti,’ the comments accompany a brief publication of recent works: Progressive Corporation Headquarters (Cleveland, 1986, with Frank Gehry), Travelers Financial Center (Hempstead, New York, 1985, with Trott and Bean), and Firehouse for Engine Company 233 (New York, 1983–1985). Frampton’s essay was published in Domus in September 1987 and the author feels obliged to frame comments on recent work from Eisenman in the context of ‘the crisis of modern culture.’7 To what end does Frampton see Eisenman working? Is it freedom of expression? That is unlikely for such a motive would remain for Eisenman on the side of the singular and the non-repetitive. To speculate on these very points might lead one to ask whether the trope of resistance provides a point of difference for Eisenman: a point of difference that is from those calling out a period of modernism’s crisis. Perhaps in the case of Eisenman, the continuity in question is with a late modernist agenda, one that is marked by constancy of disruptions. Jeffrey Kipnis provides further support in his discussion of two themes, that of text and of defiance to type. A discussion of this latter theme provides another lens on this aspect of Eisenman’s work. In the context of a reflection on Eisenman’s relation to architectural effects in the projects of the 1980s and early 1990s, Kipnis postulates on the desire by Eisenman to resist falling into the trap of the prototypical. In the case of the Church of the Year 2000 developed in the mid 1990s, for example, Kipnis sees evidence that the building as evolved resists assimilation to ‘prototype.’8 A further characterisation of this resistance ambition can be found in what Kipnis identifies as an ‘eschewal of prototypical ambition.’9 To stay with Kipnis, in two pieces, partially overlapping in content, Kipnis provides a helpful framing of Eisenman’s work as in part ultimately about self-destabilisation. It is a moment when critics and theorists are attempting to situate trends, sensibilities, and their distinguishing spatial/ formal qualities. For Kipnis, Eisenman and others in that moment could be described as attempting ‘to produce self-destabilising works.’10 For Kipnis,

26  Part I this ambition is one of a number of underlying concerns on the side of decomposition. The other ambition concerns a positive repulsion to type as already noted. Rosalind Krauss provides further support to this case for seeing Eisenman as a resistor in claiming to discover in the architect one who resists meaning. The argument occurs in her essay ‘Death of a Hermeneutic Phantom’ which also extends the potential effect of transforming the architectural work into a cognitive object, though that is a separate matter. Where does she position Eisenman in the story about the death of hermeneutic phantoms? Krauss situates Eisenman’s clearly on the side of resistance to the clarity of or identity in meaning when she writes: ‘The formalist interest in the work of art as a moment through which experience is thickened and rendered opaque must be viewed in the light of this structuralist critique…’11 To turn to another commentator, in his essay on Eisenman’s work from the mid 1980s, Arie Graafland provides a useful synthetic statement on Eisenman’s thinking about and use of text at the time. In Graafland’s formulation, Eisenman’s deployment of text can be aligned with an architectural stance that resists. According to Graafland, in situating the architectural plan as text, Eisenman places the plan in the realm of an endlessly deferred meaning. The text is never accorded nor leads one to a single truth or a conclusive evaluation. In positioning the plan as text, Eisenman places the work of architecture as resisting closure, resisting meaning in favour of ‘an endless process,’ according to Graafland.12 Alejandro Zaera-Polo, a decade after ‘En Terror Firma,’ picks up the theme of opposition. In his 1997 essay, ‘Eisenman’s Machine of Infinite Resistance,’13 Zaera-Polo qualifies Eisenman’s stance as a ‘position of resistance.’14 Zaera-Polo specifically starts to articulate aspects of that position by referencing three qualities that might differentiate Eisenman’s mode from other modes. While Zaera-Polo focuses on other aspects, he starts by highlighting Eisenman’s embrace of arbitrariness as supplanting a reliance on origins, absence in lieu of presence, and a kind of ‘machinic behaviour.’ Zaera-Polo further qualifies projects of the period as developing specific devices or tropes in this resistance practice. These include depleting (erasing, subtracting) content by means of arbitrary and multiple manipulations such as grafting and scaling. These are explored by Eisenman in projects for University Art Museum (Long Beach), Monte Paschi Bank Competition (Sienna), and Romeo and Juliet (Verona). Zaera-Polo also identifies a technique of transformative traces. These are topographic at Emory; artificial such as in the Mercator lines in Berlin; fictional/geographic histories at Long Beach such as rendered through the river bed; morphological models from science, such as by means of the use of DNA figures in the Biocenter for J.W. Goethe University; or delivered by means of Boolean cubes as space-structure generators in Carnegie Mellon Research Institute. According to Zaera-Polo, this blending and blurring of models and references work to disrupt any stable approach. This in turn can encourage the

Practicing Resistance 27 architect to adopt postures from arenas outside architecture that maintain a distance from conventional architectural conditions. In this distancing, one consequence is to release the potential for hitherto unimagined or visualised architectural states. According to this interpretation, Eisenman at the time assumes a position that intentionally aims to differentiate itself from the fragment, as one index of modernity. This can be experienced by considering, for example, the supplanting effect generated in the pleating rolled out in Rebstockpack and given a different expression in Tours. Continuity is opted out of in favour of the use of differentiated fields, not as neutral ground but as complicated and inhabited plane without clear or direct affiliation to place or use. Frampton provides a further provocation for situating, however, provisionally on the side of resistance, Eisenman’s work. This can be seen in Frampton’s identification of a swerve from relational to what Frampton names ‘deconstructional.’15 For the purposes of this chapter, we’ll refer to this concern with the decompositional as aligning with Eisenman’s use of the latter term in the 1984 ‘Futility of Objects’ essay discussed in the opening chapter. Frampton writes in a discussion of Long Beach Museum: ‘Eisenman has passed from the strictly relational approach … to the arbitrary conjunction of contours [in Long Beach, and the near contemporary Romeo and Juliet project] that are united solely by the fact that they happen to be rival iterations of the same reality.’16 The term deconstructional is used by Frampton to announce and demarcate a shift in Eisenman’s thinking from the ‘relational’ to ‘the arbitrary conjunction[s]’ of a deconstructional period. This later is revealed in part by a turn to topography and fictional archaeologies. In this regard, the Progressive Corporation Headquarters project continues the investigations of IBA Social Housing and Long Beach Museum.

1.2 Analysis In the following, I return to the themes identified as characteristic of one strain of period preoccupations and expand on the reading. The themes are presentness, partial figure, and between. 1.2.1  Theme: Presentness In a paper originally given at a conference in 1993, Eisenman provides a formulation of how presentness operates in architecture. In a discussion that I expand on later, he writes: ‘presentness is a way of opening up what is repressed in architecture’s assumed to be natural instrumentality of form and function, or of meaning and function.’17 Eisenman continues: ‘Presentness is that condition which allows the object to remain unabsorbed into the normalised interiority of architecture. It allows the object to remain outside of its original time as a critical instrument.’18

28  Part I Any judgement of Eisenman’s work must rest not on its quality as a monument, with the implied trappings of consistency and resolution that might imply. Rather a distinguishing characteristic, as I hope is supported in that follows, is a reading of Eisenman’s capacity to resist over time absorption into what he brands architecture’s normative culture. I am referring to a mode of resistance that emphatically occupies the architect throughout the 1980s and well into the 1990s. This is also to acknowledge it implies a stance to which the previous section of this chapter provided some evidence in support based on a survey of critical commentators. This mode or manner of resistance can be found for instance in the architect’s reflections on the destiny of one of his House projects some 20 years after its completion. In a monograph on House VI to take up another instance of this stance, Eisenman writes: ‘Any judgment of House VI today … must rest not in its quality as a monument … but rather in its capacity over time to resist absorption into the normative culture of architecture. /…/ This resistance is what I call presentness. This is a condition of an object which, both by its capacity to maintain this subversion over time, creates a quality in real space and time that has nothing to do with the traditional categories of spatial quality: meaning, function, aesthetics.’ He continues, suggesting an architectural mode and model of resistance in Le Corbusier’s Monastery at La Tourette: ‘the project retains presentness today … because La Tourette’s subversion of the monastic typology has not been reabsorbed into a new normative condition; it remains as subversive today as it was thirty-five years ago.’19 This capacity to resist absorption can include being in a state of the new – as Eisenman discusses in relation to Ronchamp – initially able to operate in the realm of presentness, but only for a period, after which Ronchamp became for Eisenman absorbed, no longer able to ‘displace the instrumentality of type.’ As a counter instance, Eisenman refers to Le Corbusier’s La Tourette. According to Eisenman, La Tourette has been able to resist absorption, fend off or at least slow down a process of selfdisappearance into the canon, into type. This qualification occurs in a discussion of the differences between Le Corbusier’s Monastery of Sainte-Marie de la Tourette and the Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp. The former for Eisenman remains transgressive. That is, the building exists in a state that resists absorption into the typological while Ronchamp lands on the side of a work that over time has been sublimated in ‘the scenographic.’20 This strategy of remaining outside, of maintaining that is, and following Eisenman, an otherness relative to a ‘normalised interiority’ of architecture, can be taken as a further mode by which Eisenman announces and then seeks to implement architecture of resistance. From this perspective, the question is then posed: Which concepts and strategies can be employed or held on to in order to slow absorption or avoid it completely?

Practicing Resistance 29 This logic of radical survival, striving against absorption, continues with Eisenman’s thinking about type. Consider his discussion of the differences between his projects for Columbus Convention Center on the one hand and Wexner Center for Visual Arts on the other. The former lands on the side of a project that is sublimated in the scenographic or the theatrical. Wexner, on the other hand, has the potential for Eisenman to persist in a state that exceeds or otherwise denies a stable simple reading, overstepping sufficiently, and, even with time’s passage, remaining in a state that Eisenman at certain moments describes as that of presentness. 1.2.2 Theme: Partial Objects, Partial Figures: Or It’s Not About Part to Whole But Just About Holes The subtitle of this subsection might be knowledge not nature as referring to a conversation Eisenman reports having with a client at the time of the project for Carnegie Mellon Research Institute. The project description on the official website sets out key elements of the intent: ‘Historically, architecture has been about overcoming nature through symbolizing the structures and cosmological attitudes of a given society. Today, science is addressing a new problem: overcoming knowledge. Without simply representing or symbolizing this problem, we designed the CMRI to describe man’s ability to overcome knowledge. To address this challenge, one must reconceptualize architecture and the way in which we occupy space.’21 Eisenman describes a conversation in which the client, a scientist, claims that we are living through a shift and that one quality of this shift is that the problem for science, and thus for architecture, is no longer nature. Knowledge, not nature, is the problem to be overcome. The client asks: What would be an architecture that challenges ‘perceptibly, conceptually, and physically the way we occupy’?22 Distinct from a practice of specific, bound figures or recognisably unified architectural shapes, the late projects are not constrained. They exceed any single interpretive reading or frame, and this can be taken as one possible architectural expression of the shift claimed. In the case of Eisenman, and from the mid 1970s to mid 1990s period under review here, there is evidence of this in the idea of the partial figure which can be claimed as another lens for understanding Eisenman’s continuous project of resistance. Eisenman perhaps says it best in relation to the non-status of the whole; about abstaining from reliance on or reference to the ideal of an intentional part to the whole relationship as a motivating force. Different, in a way we will need to attempt to articulate, from the fragment, and different from a specific notion of continuity, Eisenman is concerned with the partial object since at least 1980 as a way to conceive something which is not a fragment and not continuous.

30  Part I In a dialogue that hones in on a shift located around House X from transformation to decomposition, Eisenman effectively mimics a change in the episteme which is endlessly in suspension; the force of freedom of that endless ‘suspension’ might be one way to understand certain projects and certain statements from this period. Picking up a sentiment from the monograph published as House X, Voice 2, that of the critic, characterises this shift away from the house as a ‘self-referential sign of its history of coming into being’ to a condition of permanent suspension in anticipation of a subsequent condition. Eisenman writes: ‘We live today in an age of partial objects. The fragments we are surrounded by are the pieces of approximation of absent wholes. This is so, however, not in the sense of evoking any original totality … but rather in the sense of approximating a subsequent condition. And far from being a unity, that subsequent condition may be one where the only relationships between the parts may be their difference; the whole is full of holes.’23 1.2.3  Theme: Between The question of the between is a touchtone in Eisenman’s writing and designs in these years. All manner and means of articulating what an architectural state of between might consist of are investigated. Project diagrams evidence literal and conceptual conditions of between. Wexner perhaps starts it off, sending it on the way, with what Eisenman describes, looking at the project under construction, as ‘the first time there is no bounded frame; rather, the invention [is a building form that] cuts between two buildings.’24 This literal strategy of building between is also present in the Frankfurt Biocenter. Perspective views which highlight this state of a between condition also reappear in the Korean National Museum, in Biocenter, in Wexner, and in the Aronoff addition at the University of Cincinnati. In Chapter 6, I discuss the Korean National Museum as containing a late residue of this tactic. In the Korean National Museum, and not dissimilar to Biocenter, there is a reliance on the one-point perspective as recorded in presentation panels. In an author’s note placed at the opening of the original publication of the essay ‘En Terror Firma,’ Eisenman announces a forthcoming book related to what at the time he characterised as ‘between.’ Eisenman writes: ‘The following text is a series of notes which merely scratch the surface of a subject which will be taken up more fully in my forthcoming book The Edge of Between.’25 What might have been the content of the yet to be published book? While the book has yet to appear, it behoves us to accept Eisenman at this word on the concept’s importance, meriting an entire book-length project, and thus raises a set of questions. Where were the potential intended points of impact of the book? Which legacies are intentionally blurred, perhaps

Practicing Resistance 31 impossible places: an ‘edge’ ‘between.’ What might an understanding of the term ‘between’ and its connotations and resonances for architecture reveal about Eisenman’s thinking at the time? Which range of concepts, devices, and temperament rounded out what would have called for an entire book to articulate? Perhaps the practice of resistance can be claimed to occupy the space to have been occupied by the book.

1.3  A Radical Desolation As a kind of closure on these reflections, let us now consider further comments and take up the notion of the gift, the swerve, and desolation as further aspects of the resistance practice generative by Eisenman in the years under review. 1.3.1  Eisenman’s Gift From out of those years, one of Eisenman’s gifts to architecture has something to do with time. We explore in Chapter 3 architectural time more broadly. For this chapter, let’s consider the notion of the fullness of time as a further variation on what qualifies as the architect’s practice of resistance. To inaugurate a defence of this proposition, we can take as witnesses two commentators, turning first back to Jeffrey Kipnis. In reacting to Fin D’Ou T Hous, Kipnis characterises Eisenman’s stance rendered in the project as one in favour of a ‘timeful mortality.’26 This particular gift, one of many that might eventually and usefully be catalogued – by genre or effect or year depending on the lens you might bring to the game –, is different in some to-be-determined way from the notion of the timeless. In what follows, I endeavour to unpack the differences between the notion of a timeful mortality versus a timeless immortality when thinking with architecture. To begin to unpack the idea of timeful mortality, Kipnis echoes in this same essay, though never explicitly cites, the ‘futility’ of Eisenman’s 1984 essay ‘The Futility of Objects.’ Eisenman calls out at a most basic level the futility of objects in the context of a programme of critical rereading across paired dichotomies that he claims underpin and constrain classical/modern/postmodern architectures. This includes an endeavour by Eisenman to displace the subject of architecture and then dislocate the object of architecture. Kipnis calls out what in this context he calls ‘the futility of architecture’s pursuit of the timeless.’27 In this regard, and to turn to a second commentator, Eisenman’s contribution can also be characterised as assuming a ceaseless posture of what Kurt Forster calls ‘counter-projects.’ Such works exact a compulsive reading of the present that is unwilling, for Forster, to hold up an image. In this regard, Forster implies that the architect is in a perpetual state of rebellion or resistance, ‘equally removed from the past as they are from a utopian idea of the future.’28

32  Part I So, both Forster and Kipnis highlight the counter position Eisenman adopts, or endeavour to create, in response to a false or futile conviction of an ambition to realise or await future states. Rather, the implication of Forster’s analysis and of Kipnis’ – the latter more by allusion than illustration – is that to track Eisenman is to claim the efficacy of adopting a carriage that might be characterised as a thoughtful and tight reading of the present. 1.3.2  The idea of a swerve in architectural thinking is evoked by Vincent Scully. The swerve describes a condition for Scully of departing from a reference or predecessor. Certain individuals swerve from an apparent risk of influence, and at the very last second. This movement is such that a new point of reference, a new pivot point, is effectively created in the gap created by, or in the void opened up in, the force of the move: a gap not there prior to the swerve. From a certain interpretation, the consequence of the swerve for the persons involved is that the new and sometimes younger player is now at the centre, gravitating around or pulled into a newly generated centre. As a further consequence, the previous predecessor is now relegated to the periphery without implying there is a centre at all, at least as relative to the assumed (however provisional) new point of reference. In the case of Eisenman, the predecessor is not one but many. The whole past of architectural thought is brought into play and also that of specific works in literature, painting, philosophy, art criticism, film, science, and mathematics. The swerve can thus be used as a shorthand for providing a further elaboration of Eisenman’s brand of resistance: not a centre, Eisenman generates a vortex that intentionally moves him to a place on the periphery. 1.3.3  To turn to another commentator, Solà-Morales talks about a strategy or approach to form making that he characterises as revealing a ‘radical desolation.’ One senses here that Solà-Morales is deeply fascinated by, and reveals a personal alliance to, the kind of architectural sensibilities and temperaments on display in certain architects (Alvaro Siza, Tadao Ando, Frank Gehry) and artists (Eduardo Chillida then Donald Judd, Richard Serra, Robert Morris, or Richard Arschwager). 29 He references in his discussion projects of the time that render conditions that are not classical, not modern, and not postmodern. We come back in Chapter 6 to Solà-Morales’ specific use of event to discuss in part the sensibility in evidence in architectural culture in the late 1980s. Here I focus on more general qualities that are germane to approaching the period Solà-Morales is writing about to see if there are elements that

Practicing Resistance 33 will help in understanding Eisenman from the lens of resistance. Though he does not refer specifically to Eisenman in this particular essay, SolàMorales’ description of projects from the period resonates with certain of the formal qualities and spatial effects as well as conceptual interests discussed above and those are considered in the chapters that follow. What is particularly striking for the discussion here around Eisenman’s thinking and design effort is Solà-Morales’ mapping of a sentiment which has moved or shifted from a concern with autonomy to a condition of what he describes as groundless. He arrives there with reference to the minimalist art of the 1960s, which was so influential on Eisenman as the latter has noted on multiple occasions, and through a specific lineage of modernist aesthetic practices gathered in the work of Morris, Serra, and Heizer. A ‘diversity of times,’ ‘untimeliness,’ ‘inconclusive,’ and ‘provisional’: such terms are used by Solà-Morales to try to indicate the character of architecture’s thinking and practice at that moment. The non-linear movement from autonomy to untimeliness reflects a certain version of Eisenman’s trajectory in the same years. Solà-Morales gave this title to a paper initially presented at the Anyone conference held in Los Angeles in 1990. The key term from the second half of the paper’s title, untimeliness, particularly resonates when examining Eisenman. Not untimely, not out of time, not in time. Rather it is a state, a temporality that is not presentable as a system nor as an aleatory instant. Perhaps therein lies the quality of desolation that Solà-Morales later turns to characterise this condition, one in which there is no specific place: no place that one might recall later. This is a kind of place that leaves no memory. It is a product of something that is aleatory and unforeseeable in situations and occasions. The question of weak form, or ‘weak image’ to reference the title given by Eisenman to a lecture from these same years, 30 is one such preoccupation. For Solà-Morales, the task is to situate architecture within a contemporaneous aesthetic system, one characterised as non-linear, plural, multiform, and multivalent. He writes: ‘There is no attempt to establish a procedure or to elaborate the architecture as the deconstruction of some previously existing architectonic text.’31 This reference to deconstruction calls attention to the difficulty in assigning stable readings to a period that is all about event and the use of certain terms. Setting aside for the moment the implications of the use of the term deconstruction, let us follow Solà-Morales, who continues: ‘The geometric dislocations, the slippings, the distortions of perpendicularity, and the incomplete anchoring of … forms are the expression of an architecture produced ex novo every time.’32 For Solà-Morales, it is perhaps these characteristics of the contemporary that cause him to grasp onto the idea of weak architecture, an idea that resonates with Eisenman’s thinking and production in those same years. It is a temperament that is different from these, and marks a different subjectobject relation as well. It is this difference that Eisenman exploits, or hooks

34  Part I onto, in relation to the fold. Solà-Morales summarises the attitude of these aesthetic efforts as rendering a ‘radical desolation,’ a result of their being ‘born out of time without regard to any systems of principles, traditions, or linguistic codes.’33 Everything is temporary, without a grounding, provisional, at immediate risk of disappearing or fading away, with no trace, no memory. This perhaps forces the architect ever more forcefully to constitute a present reality. There is a new freedom, but also a new responsibility. Rather than the conditions of displacement and disruption called up at the beginning of this chapter, it might be useful to think of something like the architectural effects of dissolution. This is to call out a kind of disappearance, a becoming absent as a further trope around the practice of resistance by the architect. This is an architectural culture that acknowledges there is no longer the potential or capacity for a monistic conception of reality, nor a stable definition of the city. The need for a stable object is absent. Such stable centrisms have dissolved in that movement of deliquescence called out by Frampton years earlier. I discuss in Chapter 3 the temporality that accompanies Eisenman in these years. If we extend Solà-Morales’ characterisation of aesthetic culture in the 1980s, we can find other qualities. One term that is used by Eisenman is that of weak form, or to refer to a term that Eisenman uses in a 1989 lecture at the Architecture Association, the problem of the weak image.34 In Chapter 2, the prospect of history as the analytical process is suggested and relayed there.

Notes 1 Peter Eisenman, “En Terror Firma: In Trails of Grotextes,” Pratt Journal of Architecture 4 (1988). 2 Eisenman, “En Terror Firma,” 115. 3 Eisenman, “En Terror Firma,” 117, emphasis in the original. 4 Eisenman, “En Terror Firma”, 117, emphasis in the original. 5 Peter Eisenman, “Interview with Peter Eisenman: ‘I Am Not Convinced That I Have a Style’”, ed. Vladimir Belogolovsky, accessed 11-11-2021, https://www.archdaily.com/785334/interview-with-peter-eisenman-i-amnot-convinced-that-i-have-a-style. 6 Kenneth Frampton, “Formation and Transformation,” in De Stijl: 1917-1931, Visions of Utopia, ed. Mildred Friedman (Oxford: Phaidon, 1982). 7 Kenneth Frampton, “Peter Eisenman Tre opere recenti,” Domus 686 (September 1987): 38. 8 Jeffrey Kipnis, “P-Tr’s Progress,” El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997): 48. 9 Kipnis, “P-Tr’s Progress,” 49. 10 Jeffrey Kipnis, “Nolo contendere,” in A Question of Qualities: Essays in Architecture, ed. Alexander Maymind (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2013), 228. An expanded version of this piece was published as “A Matter of Respect” in A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 232 (January 1990): 134–137.

Practicing Resistance 35 11 Rosalind Krauss, “Death of a Hermeneutic Phantom: Materialization of the Sign in the Work of Peter Eisenman,” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 112 (January 1980): 217. The essay is reprised in Peter Eisenman Houses of Cards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 166–184. 12 Arie Graafland, “Peter Eisenman: Architecture in Absentia”, in Peter Eisenman Recent Projects, ed. Arie Graafland. (Nigmegen: SUN, 1989), 124. 13 Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “La Máquina de Resistencia Infinita de Eisenman/ Eisenman’s Machine of Infinite Resistance,” El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997). 14 Zaera-Polo, “Eisenman’s Machine,” 52. 15 Kenneth Frampton, “Eisenman Revisited: Running Interference,” in Peter Eisenman Recent Projects, ed. Arie Graafland (Nigmegen: SUN, 1989), 53. It should be noted that the term ‘deconstructional’ might be the consequence of a translation from Dutch to English. An earlier, shorter version of this paper is published in Domus 686 (September 1987). 16 Frampton, “Running Interference,” 53. 17 Peter Eisenman, ‘Presentness and the “Being-Only-Once” of Architecture,’ in Deconstruction is/in America. A New Sense of the Political, ed. Anselm Haverkamp (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 144. 18 Peter Eisenman, “Diagrams of Anteriority,” in Diagram Diaries, Peter Eisenman (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 38. 19 Peter Eisenman, “Afterword,” in Peter Eisenman’s House VI. The Client’s Response, Suzanne Frank (New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1994), 110. 20 Peter Eisenman and Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “A Conversation with Peter Eisenman,” El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997), 14. 21 Eisenman Architects, “Carnegie Mellon Research Institute,” accessed 28-072021, https://eisenmanarchitects.com/Carnegie-Mellon-Research-Institute1989. 22 Eisenman, “En Terror Firma,” 24. 23 Peter Eisenman, “Sandboxes: House Xia,” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism): Special Issue Peter Eisenman 112 (January 2001): 223. 24 Peter Eisenman and Jeffrey Kipnis, “Interview: Peter Eisenman with Jeff Kipnis,” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 232 (January 1990): 173. 25 Peter Eisenman, “En Terror Firma,” 111. 26 Jeffrey Kipnis, “Architecture Unbound. Consequences of the recent work of Peter Eisenman,” in Fin d’Ou T Hou S, Peter Eisenman (London: Architectural Association, 1985), 23. The publication comprises a Folio box, a booklet with essays by Kipnis and Nina Hofer, embossed plates and full colour plates and was published to coincide with an exhibition of Peter Eisenman’s original drawing of Fin d’Ou T Hou S held at the Architectural Association, London, from 20 February to 23 March 1985. 27 Kipnis, “Architecture Unbound,” 23. 28 Kurt W. Forster, “Traces and Treason of a Tradition. A Critical Commentary on Graves’ and Eisenman/Robertson’s Projects for the Ohio State University Center for the Visual Arts,” in A Center for the Visual Arts. The Ohio State University Competition, eds. Peter Arnell and Ted Bickford (New York: Rizzoli, 1984), 139. 29 Ignasi de Solà-Morales, “From Autonomy to Untimeliness,” in Differences: Topographies of Contemporary Architecture, trans. Graham Thompson, ed. Sarah Whiting (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997). 30 Peter Eisenman, “Architecture and the Problem of the Weak Image,” lecture given at the Architecture Association, London, 05-04-1989, accessed 29-03-2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC0f_Wp0I4c. 31 Solà-Morales, “From Autonomy to Untimeliness,” 88. 32 Solà-Morales, “From Autonomy to Untimeliness,” 88.

36  Part I 33 Solà-Morales, “From Autonomy to Untimeliness,” 88. 34 Eisenman, “Architecture and the Problem of the Weak Image.”

Bibliography Eisenman, Peter and Alejandro Zaera-Polo. “A Conversation with Peter Eisenman.” El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997): 6–20. Eisenman, Architects, “Carnegie Mellon Research Institute,” accessed July 28, 2021, https://eisenmanarchitects.com/Carnegie-Mellon-Research-Institute-1989. Eisenman, Peter. “Afterword.” In Peter Eisenman’s House VI. The Client’s Response, edited by Suzanne Frank, 109–110. New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1994. Eisenman, Peter. “Architecture and the Problem of the Weak Image.” Lecture given at the Architecture Association, London, 05-04-1989, accessed 29-03-2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC0f_Wp0I4c. Eisenman, Peter. “Diagrams of Anteriority.” In Diagram Diaries, edited by Peter Eisenman, 36–43. London: Thames and Hudson, 1999. Eisenman, Peter. “En Terror Firma: In Trails of Grotextes.” Pratt Journal of Architecture 4 (1988): 111–121. Eisenman, Peter. “Interview with Peter Eisenman: ‘I Am Not Convinced That I Have a Style’.” Edited by Vladimir Belogolovsky. Accessed 11-11-2021, https://www.archdaily.com/785334/interview-with-peter-eisenman-i-am-notconvinced-that-i-have-a-style Eisenman, Peter. “Presentness and the ‘Being-Only-Once’ of Architecture.” In Deconstruction is/in America. A New Sense of the Political, edited by Anselm Haverkamp, 134–145. New York: New York University Press, 1995. Eisenman, Peter. “Sandboxes: House Xia.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism): Special Issue Peter Eisenman 112 (January 2001): 223–227. Eisenman, Peter and Jeffrey Kipnis. “Interview: Peter Eisenman with Jeff Kipnis.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 232 (January 1990): 170–182. Forster, Kurt W. “Traces and Treason of a Tradition. A Critical Commentary on Graves’ and Eisenman/Robertson’s Projects for the Ohio State University Center for the Visual Arts.” In A Center for the Visual Arts. The Ohio State University Competition, edited by Peter Arnell and Ted Bickford, 135–139. New York: Rizzoli, 1984. Frampton, Kenneth. “Eisenman Revisited: Running Interference.” In Peter Eisenman Recent Projects, edited by Arie Graafland, 47–61. Nigmegen: SUN, 1989. Frampton, Kenneth. “Formation and Transformation.” In De Stijl: 1917-1931, Visions of Utopia, edited by Mildred Friedman, 99–123. Oxford: Phaidon, 1982. Frampton, Kenneth. “Peter Eisenman Tre opere recenti.” Domus 686 (September 1987): 31–39. Graafland, Arie. “Peter Eisenman: Architecture in Absentia.” In Peter Eisenman Recent Projects, edited by Arie Graafland, 95–125. Nigmegen: SUN, 1989. Kipnis, Jeffrey. “Architecture Unbound. Consequences of the Recent Work of Peter Eisenman.” In Fin d’Ou T Hou S, edited by Peter Eisenman, 12–23. London: Architectural Association, 1985. Kipnis, Jeffrey. “Nolo contendere.” In A Question of Qualities: Essays in Architecture, edited by Alexander Maymind, 225–229. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2013.

Practicing Resistance 37 Kipnis, Jeffrey. “P-Tr’s Progress.” El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997): 36–49. Krauss, Rosalind. “Death of a Hermeneutic Phantom: Materialization of the Sign in the Work of Peter Eisenman.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 112 (January 1980): 188–219. Solà-Morales, Ignasi de. “From Autonomy to Untimeliness.” In Differences: Topographies of Contemporary Architecture, translated by Graham Thompson, edited by Sarah Whiting, 72–90. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1997. Zaera-Polo, Alejandro. “La Máquina de Resistencia Infinita de Eisenman/ Eisenman’s Machine of Infinite Resistance.” El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997): 50–63.

2

History

2.1 It all comes down, if one accepts to suspend belief in any firm stability to the sequence of things, to how it is viewed. In the case of Peter Eisenman’s rapport with architecture’s past, this can be demonstrated. Let us look at his reaction to that history of the immediate still present. Putting aside the temporal and thus spatial involution of the title, Eisenman’s prefacing text to Anthony Vidler’s Histories of the Immediate Present leads one with difficulty to look beyond the past as an always necessary even if absent companion. And Eisenman provides a direct description of what is at stake. Eisenman’s position, accepting his foreword as also partially confession, is then in part about bracketing: about taking a pause in order for another take on the relation between history and architecture’s project. As Eisenman states in getting to the crux of it: ‘If “history” can be seen as a bracketed term here, then this bracketing offers an alternative to the disciplinary boundaries of history and architecture, and ultimately brackets any form of autonomy.’1 If this statement from the late 2000s brings some clarity to his stance vis-à-vis history, we can track its emergence over a longer arc. Eisenman in part characterises his activity as a practice of analysis or, more recently, as close reading. For the purposes of this chapter, the terms analysis, reading, and close reading are used interchangeably. They describe the activity of Eisenman the architect-historian in front of his object of study. In the simplest of formulas, Eisenman’s object of study is the relationship between forms from architecture’s past (buildings, plans, elevations, sections, axonometric drawings), ideas from inside and outside the discipline of architecture, and the potentially transformative conditions released through their mutual confrontations. The term and practice of close reading have a long provenance for Eisenman, blending broad tendencies (art historical, hermeneutic, linguistic, post-structural) and channelling specific influences. Such influences range from Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Frederic Jameson, and Rosalind Krauss to Colin Rowe, Manfredo Tafuri, Rudolf Wittkower, and Heinrich Wölfflin. DOI: 10.4324/9780429059964-4

History 39 In order to begin to frame the ambitions and characteristics of Eisenman’s practice of close reading, four texts are considered. The four texts are sections of ‘The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture’ (1963), ‘From Object to Relationship’ parts I and II (1970, 1971), ‘The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Difference’ (1984), and the concluding section of Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques (2003) with a focus on the idea of the critical. Each text adopts a specific lens when engaging with works from architecture’s past. In order to provide an appropriately narrow frame of focus, Eisenman’s reference to the projects of Giuseppe Terragni – an occupation for more than 40 years – provides a basic comparative index illustrating the impact of different themes and historical/critical efforts. In what follows I am not trying to hypothesise about the relation of Eisenman to Terragni or track the many design problems and lessons of Terragni revealed in Eisenman’s various analyses. Rather, this is a preliminary survey that takes as the object of study different kinds of close reading across a limited set of what I am calling Eisenman’s historical writings. It is not proposed that the four historical writings establish a sequential development or an evolution in thought, analytical style, or formal sensibility. I consider, more modestly, points of view, key terms, composition principles, and drawing styles in each as a way to examine Eisenman’s use of history and practice of close reading and in turn contribute to providing an armature to understanding this aspect of his multifaceted work. Eisenman alludes to, but never fully articulates, a theory of his use of history. Nor does he describe in detail sufficient to extrapolate strategic assumptions underpinning this aspect of his work. An analysis of key texts does, however, demonstrate if not the existence of a coherent theory then at least certain biases or assumptions. For instance, the process of close reading for Eisenman almost always involves a redrawing and rewriting of the object of study to display singular architectural conditions, form relations, and form generation devices. In this redrawing, Eisenman is able to identify differences from other conditions and, in turn, speculate on their relation to specific ideas and their potential to inflect or inform the conditions of possibility for any architecture. This practice is evident right from the beginning of Eisenman’s career. In 1963, he completes his doctoral dissertation The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture in which buildings of modernism’s immediate past are examined to reveal latent generative and transformational formal moves. Such moves, in relation to conjectural development phases of a project, or the building as realised, provide a potential description of architectural intention and conceptual content. In subsequent decades, Eisenman deploys additional and different approaches to close reading across architecture’s past. In his introduction to Ten Canonical Buildings 1950–2000, for example, Eisenman suggests that his reading methodology has varied between the formal, the textual,

40  Part I and the phenomenological.2 Buildings by architects ranging from Scamozzi to Schinkel and Stirling and Koolhaas to Rossi and Venturi are captured at different stages. As Eisenman points out in a 1969 essay on different approaches to architectural history, historical analysis can form ‘a basis for understanding the relation between ideas and formal invention of an architecture.’3 It is perhaps in this endless and open pursuit of understanding relationships between form and ideas in architecture that the largest potential in Eisenman’s historical writing resides. Most of the scholarship on Eisenman has focused on his architectural design projects, the relationship between projects, his writing and architectural theory, or the trajectory and place of the projects within the history of the discipline or Eisenman’s own practice. However, there does exist a small body of secondary work on his approach to, and use of, history. While the divisions between his work as a practicing architect, historian, and theorist are often hard to identify or maintain in an extended way, it is possible to isolate certain themes in this body of secondary writing. Studies by Stan Allen, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Raphael Moneo, and Anthony Vidler can be taken to provide an especially useful context in this regard. Allen provides a helpful first setting for approaching Eisenman’s work on history. Citing Eisenman’s analysis of James Stirling’s Leicester Engineering Building, the impact of Eisenman’s practice of close reading, writes Allen, ‘is to make contradiction and discontinuity visible.’4 As will be seen, this making ‘discontinuity visible’ – different from a desire to establish continuous, stable, closed narratives – will be a recurrent theme. Compared to Allen, Moneo’s analysis of Eisenman emphasises its potential for informing architectural practice more directly. For Moneo, Eisenman occupies a hinge position in contemporary practice, summing up a period while at the same time acting as a catalyst for the next. What Moneo tracks, as a companion to his analysis of specific projects, is a turn in the way Eisenman thinks through the discipline’s history. The turn, according to Moneo, moves from an autonomous architecture to one which is bound by the present. In this turn there is an obligation for architecture to incorporate the outside within itself, the outside world becoming what Moneo calls an ‘accomplice’ to the project.5 The role of historical phenomena in Eisenman’s writing and projects is a minor incident in Moneo’s more emphatic chronological review of the theoretical biases underpinning specific projects. One relevant example of the former is Eisenman’s reading of plans by Vincenzo Scamozzi. According to Moneo, out of Eisenman’s reading of Scamozzi, ‘the inapprehensible, indescribable mechanism of form generation’ in Scamozzian architecture is revealed.6 The aim of the analyses of historical phenomenon therefore can be claimed to make manifest points of resistance: things that do not hold or do not align with norms, standards, or types. While searching for mannerist traits in Eisenman’s writing and projects, Aureli concludes that what characterises Eisenman’s theoretical work on

History 41 the site of architecture’s past is his seeing history as fragments, as distinct from a vision of history as composed of models. This is history as ‘heterogeneous’ fragments.’7 Aureli goes so far as to identify architecture with history, putting forward a claim for ‘architecture as history and therefore as a heterogeneous collection of forms and principles.’8 Where Allen focused on an open-ended relation to the historical project per se, and Moneo on what it might mean for practice, Aureli emphasises the potential identity of the two via Eisenman’s thinking. In a more recent essay, Vidler returns to the theme of Eisenman’s productive inconsistency, though in a form and context different from that of Allen discussed above. In a review of Palladio Virtuel, a 2012 exhibition conceived and designed by Eisenman around 20 Palladian villas, the exhibition’s importance for Vidler lies in its innovative analytical and historical methodologies as manifest in the drawings, conjectural models, and installation.9 According to Vidler, Eisenman’s manner of working on and using historical material reinforces an awareness of architecture’s ‘constant comprehension of undecidability, and an awareness of indeterminacy … [the architecture in a state of] unending irresolution.’10 Another point of view is introduced by Jeff Kipnis, who emphasises a phase shift in this period away from structure and process to aesthetic. Eisenman calls him out for this when Eisenman writes: ‘As you have said, my work has moved from process to aesthetic.’11 A number of themes emerge in these secondary writings: the idea of history as revealing indeterminacies; the alignment or identity of analytic methods in historical close reading and design processes for projects; and the open-ended nature of Eisenman’s close reading method. These contribute to the study of period projects below in Part II.

2.2 A summary differentiation of the four texts of Eisenman – ‘The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture,’ ‘From Object to Relationship,’ ‘The Futility of Objects,’ and Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques – suggests an oscillating focus on architecture as object, on relationships (between ideas, forms, and the discipline of architecture to itself), and finally on the object’s disappearance (or a provisional absence of interest or loss of faith in treating architecture as autonomous). In addition, there is an emerging sense of the critical in Eisenman’s emphatic turn towards disciplinary knowledge as the architect’s primary responsibility. 2.2.1  Formal Analysis: The Object In the section of ‘The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture’ specifically focused on Terragni, Eisenman analyses two of Terragni’s buildings, the Casa del Fascio and the Asilo Infantile. His analysis is based on four generic properties of architectural form, namely volume, mass, surface, and

42  Part I movement.12 These in turn are framed by two primary formal categories or conditions: linear and centroidal. Eisenman relies on these two to distinguish formal decisions underlying specific distributions among the four generic properties. Having established a preliminary matrix of relations at the beginning of ‘The Formal Basis,’ two points of view are announced: the conceptual and the pictorial. In his dissertation, Eisenman downplays the pictorial. In this way, the text reveals an underlying resistance to the pictorial here equated by Eisenman with the phenomenal or perceptual.13 The emphasis is thus directed towards the conceptual, revealed, for example, during the course of his analysis of Asilo Infantile where Eisenman provides a tight formula for this point of view: ‘On initial examination, in purely pictorial or perceptual terms, the first project [for the Asilo Infantile] might be considered to be the more interesting of the two. These analyses, however, are not conceived of in terms of the pictorial and perceptual qualities of any building but rather are an investigation of its conceptual basis and therefore its generic state. Hence in conceptual terms, since all form must have an absolute reference …’14 Slightly later he writes: ‘In both Terragni buildings [Casa del Fascio and Asilo Infantile], it is obvious that the specific form of each element is derived from an absolute condition; the form itself only receiving its specific meaning from a conceptual reference to this condition.’15 The underlying proposition for Eisenman is that both buildings are examples of a centroidal condition, one of two general, underlying formal systems. In his analysis of the Casa del Fascio, several themes dominate. A primary one is that of a surface versus mass dialectic: an example of the impact and deformations or distortions that a centroidal system undergoes when confronted with a single entry.16 In the fuller analysis, the moves are dominated by Eisenman’s volumetric reading which assumes a full cube as the absolute beginning condition which is then sliced in half horizontally with the courtyard shifted as a consequence of the impact and force of the entry.17 Eisenman’s analytical style thus begins with a system or economy of working, the terms of reference assuming at a fundamental level four generic properties (volume, mass, surface, movement), and absolute or formal conditions (linear, centroidal). To this system, various factors are introduced: site forces, movement vectors, and aesthetic concepts such as symmetry. These factors lead to changes in or deformation of the base condition that in turn produces a specific form. Distension, distortion, and stressing are the kinds of effects that leave their marks. Conjectural reconstructions are adopted as diagrammatic tools in the analysis. As one example of Eisenman’s approach, the case of column 16 in Terragni’s Asilo Infantile can be used. Eisenman diagrams the potential spatial tensions – and the physical torqueing caused by such tensions – between the south-west (front) façade and the north-west (side) façade.18

History 43 The analytic diagrams with their use of highlighting, banding, and arrows illustrate the conceptual questions of interest to Eisenman. Along with the Casa del Fascio, the Asilo Infantile is described as a centroidal system, this one read in response to a frontal entry, now off a linear external vector.19 Eisenman discusses in detail the traces of distortions from earlier design development schemes in relation to the scheme as built. Six analysis drawings in the section on Asilo Infantile are particularly revealing in this regard. 20 The Asilo Infantile does not return in Eisenman’s writing, which is perhaps a sign of shifted interest in terms of the lessons identified or problems tested. What the Asilo Infantile does convey or illustrate is a detailed reading of the potential syntactical force of columns. 2.2.2 Relationships ‘From Object to Relationship’ is published in Casabella in 1970 and ‘From Object to Relationship II’ appears in Perspecta in 1971. These essays again use examples from Terragni and illustrate how Eisenman’s manner of close reading has changed since the Cambridge dissertation of eight years earlier. Eisenman introduces a key distinction in the two articles, that between surface or sensual aspects of a building and deep or conceptual aspects. He locates on the side of the surface such aspects as texture, colour, and shape. These engender perceptual responses. 21 The deep is occupied with conceptual relationships among forms, physical elements, or space. Eisenman lists several form conditions in this category including frontality, obliqueness, recession, elongation, compression, and shear. 22 Perhaps counter-intuitively, surface aspects are described as being concerned more with conditions of fact, while deep aspects are claimed to be concerned with speculations on ideas. As implied in the title of Eisenman’s essays, there is a change of focus from architecture as an object to potential categories of relationships engendered in architecture. The articles explore and characterise techniques needed for moving from a reading of architecture as an object (which Eisenman describes as a primarily perceptual response) to architectural conditions as relationships (which Eisenman describes as an essentially conceptual nature). Eisenman calls these techniques ‘transformational methods,’ or devices, and he focuses on one technique in particular: that the use of ambiguity as both a methodological tool and as an aim or objective. 23 In ‘The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture,’ the concept of ambiguity is only a minor reference. In ‘From Object to Relationship’ it takes on an upfront role. I return to the question of ambiguity in subsequent chapters and consider it in greater depth in the context of Eisenman’s teaching in the closing chapter. References to, and use of, generic or absolute conditions are no longer present or at least are more in the background in the 1971 text when

44  Part I compared to the 1963 text. To illustrate the ideas, Eisenman turns again to Terragni. To emphasise his general distinction between surface (perceptual) versus deep (conceptual) architectures, Eisenman locates Terragni on the side of the conceptual. Ambiguities in Terragni’s building are revealed in a series of analytic diagrams intended to make the existence of abstract formal relationships more legible. The reading of the drawings and building as built leads to a narrative about ‘the building’s semantic intent.’24 In this regard, the ‘From’ in the title ‘From Object to Relationship’ serves to differentiate a perceptual or pictorial reading from a conceptual one. At the end of the text, Eisenman gives a clear statement of the change in viewpoint since the Cambridge dissertation. It is worth citing in its entirety: ‘… if it is accepted that the problem of a search for new meaning from formal constructs is important, then a shift from an ‘object’ to a ‘relationship’ orientation is one possible way to conceive of the problem. Given such a change in focus, the establishment of both a surface and deep level syntax as well as the development of transformational methods, which relate the specific forms to a series of formal universals become necessary.’25 In order to illustrate this change of focus, Eisenman turns to Terragni’s Casa Giuliani-Frigerio, a project that will accompany his work without ceasing in subsequent decades. The intent of the drawing analysis is clearly stated: the purpose of Eisenman’s analysis is to make more understandable the relationship between a deep ‘latent conceptual structure’ and the building as a built object. 26 In terms of drawing style, Eisenman deploys axonometric drawings to isolate conditions while alternating between a number of primary readings including volumetric versus planar and revealing effects such as erosion, subtraction, addition, and residue. Eisenman starts with a mass reading, but it is the planar readings that occupy the majority of the effort.27 Starting with an oblique view and direct projection elevations, the east façade is then presented in a sequence of axonometric drawings that illustrate architectural problems and diagrammatic techniques.28 The form conditions examined include inside/outside (non-)correspondences, solids eroded or cut, planar versus solid oscillation, and an implied movement or overall animation of façade elements. Eisenman works on five versions of Terragni’s building designs and names them schemes A, B, C, D, and Final. He clearly points out that his aim is not to create a narrative account of changes – though key changes are noted – but to use them to narrow in on, or refine, an analytic language (both in text and in drawing) in relation to the impact and consequence of formal moves. For example, the balcony in Terragni’s Scheme B projects from the south-west corner of the Casa Giuliani Frigerio. Eisenman writes that as a consequence of its specific projection, a cascade of effects ensues, including a ‘planar stratification.’29 Other moves result to reinforce, inhibit, or

History 45 constrain certain form relationships. For example, the bent frame of the north façade is used to highlight the difference between the effects of eroding a solid versus spatial layering, a condition he will return to 30 years later.30 Eisenman uses axonometric drawings to display bay readings in elevation as well as diagrams of conjectural states of addition or subtraction to speculate on possible prior conditions or states of tension. The four figures discussed above realise this position. A specific device noted by Eisenman is that of the oblique, stating ‘Giuliani-Frigerio demands the oblique.’31 Different from ‘The Formal Basis’ where the diagonal was put on hold or at least not specifically sought after, the diagonal and the oblique are now seen as devices used to intentionally construct or retain ambiguities.32 The phrase ‘demands the oblique’ arises near the end of a discussion of the different formal relationships and the different spatial energies which can be found in Casa del Fascio versus those of Giuliani-Frigerio. This tactic is revealed in his analysis of the east façade of Giuliani-Frigerio. Eisenman writes: ‘… the reading of a tripartite reticulated grid is suppressed and the ambiguity is developed between readings of eroded solid and planar layering.’33 This supports Eisenman’s proposal to think in analytical and not historical terms, further reinforcing the above suggestion that ambiguity is highly valued.34 2.2.3  Decomposition, or Getting Over Objects If Eisenman’s dissertation ‘The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture’ can be said to be concerned with charting distortions from an object’s generic condition – whether such transformations are real or speculative – then ‘Object to Relationship’ I and II can be claimed to articulate potential effects resulting between forms or conditions. In order to begin to understand the singular position of the third text considered – ‘The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Difference’ – two citations from the text can be used. The first citation clearly signals a gap from the dissertation’s assumption of a generic or absolute state and thus a shift in viewpoint as compared with the two other writing pieces examined above: ‘… there seems to be no stable or original condition from which such an internal history can either begin or be read.’35 In order to understand the radical change in first principles, this should be compared to the earlier viewpoints that assume absolutes or formal universals. The second citation introduces the spatial consequences of what Eisenman calls a postmodernist or post-historical sensibility. Whereas the modernist idea of dispersal, incongruity, and fragment is ultimately projected to return the system to closure, the Giuliani-Frigerio apartment block is a set of fragments which is fundamentally incomplete. Each time a condition of origin is suggested visually, its resolution in the actual building is refuted. It would seem that a shift of bay here or volume

46  Part I there would indicate a single axis of symmetry, but when the mental move is in fact made, something else becomes unstable and suggests another axis of symmetry. These incongruent axes, in themselves, are a straightforward definition of the idea of the difference; they signal the impossibility of a return to a type form.36 What is at stake in the kinds of historical practices released in this article? To recall our opening questions, how does Terragni function here? What can be made of the ‘futility’ in the title of this article at this moment? On this last question, one seemingly clear interpretation is the impossibility of a return to the type form. As Eisenman writes: ‘In decomposition, there is no type form, there is no ground zero.’37 The ideal of type form can be claimed from both classical and modern points of view. In the postmodern point of view described by Eisenman, this ideal does not exist. According to Eisenman, a stable or original condition, one signalled by the idea and ideal of type in classical and modern viewpoints, can no longer be assumed to exist. In support of this reading, Eisenman uses plan analyses more emphatically than in the 1970 and 1971 articles. In this sense, the text echoes the plan-dominant mode of the 1963 dissertation. The plans of Barry’s Houses of Parliament, Palladio’s Palazzo Della Torre, Scamozzi’s Fabrica Fino, and Hadrian’s Villa are all referenced. But it is direct projection elevations that function as the primary analytic vehicle in this article and Terragni’s GiulianiFrigerio returns as one of its primary supports. Giuliani-Frigerio appears after the Palazzos Minelli, Surian, and Foscarini, along with Hadrian’s Villa, the Houses of Parliament, and Fabrica Fino are called up. They all represent instances where an ‘extra-compositional’ reading is needed, one that differs from, or resists, classical and modern points of view.38 Terragni’s Giuliani-Frigerio returns specifically to give evidence, revealing aspects of what Eisenman names a third, postmodern sensibility. According to Eisenman, this third sensibility is characterised by an oscillation of plane and volume, an oscillation never settling down and thriving in ‘unresolved symmetries and asymmetries.’39 Eisenman goes on to identify a series of composition problems – including symmetry, asymmetry, a missing ideal or stable origin – in support of his reading of a non-classical, non-modernist manner. Seventeen analytic drawings of Giuliani-Frigerio are provided in Eisenman’s analysis. How do they differ from the façade analyses of, for example, Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky in their study of Michelangelo’s designs for the façade of San Lorenzo?40 Sketched out over 21 variations, the San Lorenzo diagrams by Rowe and Slutzky illustrate potential figures within the elevations. These include variations on cruciform, checkerboard, H, L, and T-shaped figures. The Rowe/Slutzky approach can be compared to that of Eisenman, the latter focused on drawing out conceptual conditions of an implied or emergent nature. Eisenman’s work in this regard has an explicit future focus, the analyses or close readings serving as ‘beginnings.’41

History 47 What differences or similarities does such a comparison reveal about the enterprise? Both Eisenman and Rowe/Slutzky share an interest in ambiguity and a state that is different from or resists simple figure/ground dichotomies.42 Eisenman argues for a radical fragment which never recalls or is attracted to a whole, whereas Rowe/Slutzky conclude that it is the ‘field revealed as positive’ that makes, for example, the work of the Mondrian of Victory Boogie Woogie and the Michelangelo of San Lorenzo so similar.43 Both rely on examples from Venice in their arguments, with Eisenman turning to the Palazzos Minelli, Surian, and Foscarini and Rowe/Slutzky to the Ca d’Oro for support. The differences are instructive for clarifying Eisenman’s point of view. Rowe/Slutzky claim a simple interest in the perceptual activities that produce oscillations. Eisenman’s aim is to remain at the level of the conceptual, his interest in part directed to conditions of virtual or invisible symmetry and asymmetry. What is new in the 1984 text of Eisenman is an explicit foregrounding of part-to-part relationships. Eisenman employs a reading of part-to-part conditions that are different from the part-to-whole relationships which underpin the Rowe/Slutzky manner of reading San Lorenzo. The latter is what I believe is essentially new and an index of the process which Eisenman calls decomposition. Eisenman, to continue, conjectures on a larger or longer trajectory, in this case three moments of design philosophy or styles of the design method. The three styles, as briefly noted, are composition (classical), transformation (modernist), and decomposition (postmodernist). Reading the footnotes in Eisenman’s essay, there is another shift that can be seen to have occurred or at least sensed, even if it remains in the shadows. I believe there is a different status and role for composition and a shift in the manner of using the north façade reading of Giuliani Frigerio since the early 1970s publications. These three processes of making – classical composition, modernist transformation, and postmodern decomposition – serve as names for a series of design processes and by implication different architectures. The third kind of making, that of decomposition, is a making by analysis according to Eisenman. The time in which it happens, or postulates, is fundamentally of the present. There is no future, nor an ideal past. The future and the past are relegated to the status of dream conditions belonging to the modern and classical viewpoints, respectively. From this arrangement, Eisenman introduces the idea of history as making or, as he describes it, of making by analysis. 2.2.4  Terragni Redux – A Critical Text ‘Terragni and the Idea of a Critical Text’ first appeared in 2003 as the closing section of the book that so miraculously animates the potential for architectural thinking at work in Terragni’s Casa del Fascio and Casa Giuliani Frigerio. It was later reprinted in a slightly amended form as a

48  Part I separate chapter in the second volume of Eisenman’s selected writings, Written into the Void.44 It contains certain preoccupations or themes seen in the other texts, variations on some of these themes, and introduces others for the first time. There are at least three changes – shifts in nuance, orientation, and focus – that are working within the text as compared to the previous texts considered. The first change occurs in the way Eisenman lays emphasis on architectural thought, that is, thinking by means of the processes and objects of architecture. Surface over space is a second theme or distinguishing aspect in this text. A third is Eisenman’s turn to perception and the perceptual, a turn to the potential for a ‘different kind of perception.’45 The effect or consequence generally is to define differences between things, not only architectural differences but also differences in historical/analytical points of view. Let’s start with the first change. To expand on the role and function of design as thinking, and different modes of thinking architecturally, one of Eisenman’s significant contributions is to put various modes of architectural thought on display. He does this by differentiating between work as an architect versus thinking as a historian or academic theoretician.46 The ideas and their contingent physical consequences that are at stake include reframing key aspects of the different sensibilities, objects, or process under examination. On the one hand, there is a condition delimited by ideas or ideals of ‘origin, hierarchy, unity, sequence, progression, and continuity,’ which is different from those of ‘fragmentation, disjunction, contingency, alternation, slippage, and oscillation’ on the other.47 For Eisenman, there are consequences tied up here with a position that treats architecture as ‘thought processes.’48 This resonates with a general focus on processes (thinking through compositional strategies) and objects (projects and buildings). The second change operates on the notions of surface and space or surface instead of space as the privileged realm of work. This emerges in the drawings and specifically articulates a difference between the Casa del Fascio and the Giuliani-Frigerio. The former in one sense is all about space (carved or eroded from an original whole) and the latter is all about surface (flayed, layered). This is clearly shown in Eisenman’s description of the Casa Giuliani-Frigerio as resisting a reading based on space categories and its surface-obsessed nature. The third change of emphasis or orientation in historical thinking and practices of close reading concerns perception, or the perceptual as a value that glides in over or under the conceptual. What is the relationship between the critical text and the phenomenal, if any? It would be too simple to claim a reversal of the conceptual over the perceptual position of the 1963 dissertation, though it may be worth examining such an idea if only briefly. Things are much more subtle, interwoven, and simultaneous, both in relation to the physical figures and compositional moves in use and in relation to the terms favoured to describe them.

History 49 To get a sense of an emerging interest in the phenomenal, listen to Eisenman on the problem and on what is at stake. The book Giuseppe Terragni, Eisenman writes, is ‘attempting to articulate the consequences of objects that are also experienced in their physical displacements, the moving in and around of objects and spaces.’49 A result of the approach can be seen in Eisenman’s treatment of the north-east corner of Giuliani-Frigerio. Recall that he has already looked at the east façade and the north elevation of this building in the 1971 and 1984 articles, respectively. Eisenman now focuses his energy on the corner itself.50 This turn to perception also marks a difference between the Casa del Fascio and the Giuliani-Frigerio. If a reading of the former is framed to imbed or embrace a logic of accretion, of linear sequence and sequential time (this then that, before then after), the latter, says Eisenman, cannot be understood as informed by accumulation. There is, rather, a strong desire or recognition of the arbitrary or the ambiguous in this other form of perception, one described as ‘a perception of accretions contingent … on the physical traversal … of a path that is never unique or hierarchical.’51 On the horizon, beyond or next to the three viewpoints or sensibilities we have become used to in ‘The Futility of Objects’ – classical, modern, postmodern – a fourth sensibility emerges. In ‘Terragni and the Idea of a Critical Text,’ it appears Eisenman introduces a dimension more emphatically open to the phenomenal, to sensation and sensibility. Eisenman’s closing discussion of the differences between a critical notation and a gestural one suggests this future line of inquiry. 52 This fourth practice is different from the compositional, transformational, and decompositional practices of its siblings and thus is separate from the others examined above.

2.3 2.3.1  Shifts and Swerves: An Open-Ended Practice Casa del Fascio occupies a key reference in Eisenman’s thinking. As suggested above, it is never simply all at once nor progressively revealed but rather forms a basis for reflection. This is confirmed in the 2004 catalogue where he writes: ‘… the Casa del Fascio as a diagram, but as a different kind of diagram than previous ideas of diagram. That is, it was no longer merely analytic, but also a template of possibilities.’53 The four texts discussed here provide a way to study Eisenman’s different approaches to close reading in architecture as another kind of ‘template of possibilities.’ While the analysis has not demonstrated the existence of a single historical project or philosophy of history in Eisenman’s texts, there are certain themes or characteristics revealed. If we accept their genre as ‘polemical essays,’ to take a methodological conclusion from ‘The Formal Method,’ and see the writing projects aligned not as closed figures but as

50  Part I non-linear fragments of an open-ended theory, then there is the potential to develop several ways to summarise them, none cumulative nor chronological in kind.54 One attempt at a synthetic treatment might try to read the texts as identical to design practice and the resulting architectural objects (whether building or project). The exercise would then be to track the shifts in point of view or thematic emphasis as they accompany Eisenman’s contemporaneous design projects of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. This approach can be provisionally framed in the formula history as close reading equals design, whether as a work on thinking or on form. But from one point of view, this might be resisted as ultimately too reductive, Eisenman’s thinking positively slipping or skipping from one position to another. It is another instance of that oscillation discussed above and a sign of an underlying ambiguity in his writing. Two citations can be used to illustrate this, and both of them are intended to start to frame the overall force and direction of the texts examined, and thus return to the opening propositions of this study and contribute to framing the examination of projects in Part II. The two citations come from Eisenman’s seldom referenced article ‘The Big Little Magazine: Perspecta 12 and the Future of the Architectural Past.’55 It is a review of a special issue of Perspecta, a journal published since 1952 by the Yale School of Architecture. The special issue itself was concerned with the methods and practice of architectural history. The first citation tightly states a relatively constant thematic assumption underlying Eisenman’s historical thinking and efforts. As Eisenman describes its role, history is ‘a vehicle for ideas.’56 This status of historical practice as one of transmitting or perhaps creating ideas might go some way in helping understand the relentless work of Eisenman on material from architecture’s past as a vehicle – or template to reference Eisenman’s own term – for inflecting the conditions of possibility around architecture’s future. The second citation from Eisenman’s 1969 essay is methodologically valuable, especially in relation to the topics and architectural problems discussed above and to be further elaborated and put to work in the critical treatment of projects in Part II. It is a call for a more or less correct mode or method of analytical work in front of historical material from within the discipline. In the course of Eisenman’s review, he outlines not a methodology, but some principles for doing the work of historical and critical analysis effectively. According to Eisenman, his writing aims to exemplify examples of ‘historical phenomenon correctly subjected to an analytical process.’57 In Eisenman’s view, this correct approach to architectural history is distinguished by three criteria: the quality and scope of drawings used in the analysis, a focus on the plan, and an approach which emphasises the relation between formal invention and ideas, that is, the relations between form creation and underlying ideas.

History 51 2.3.2  Critical History A different summation of the historical project as close reading in Eisenman can be teased out of a more recent essay, ‘Fame as the Avatar of History.’ Published in 2005 in an issue of Perspecta devoted to fame, and in the course of addressing the Mephistophelian question of the cost of fame, Eisenman provides further clues to the nature of his work on history as an architect-historian of a certain genre. The comments emerge in his reflection on the limits of teaching. What, asks Eisenman, are the conditions of possibility for teaching architectural ideas? Eisenman believes that only certain architectural projects have the necessary ‘disciplinary autonomy’ for them to work as instruments of teaching.58 To take only one example, Borromini’s projects manifest a condition of disciplinary autonomy, one not present in the work of Bernini. According to Eisenman, this condition can be seen in Borromini’s column/wall ambiguities. This state of autonomy allows Eisenman to teach Borromini, to undertake that is, a critical reading of problems inside the discipline. I return to these themes in the final chapter in relation to Eisenman’s teaching. From this, we can attempt to formulate, in the context of the ideas discussed above, a formula of Eisenman’s relation to historical phenomena. The four texts mark various approaches to what he describes as a critical history of architecture, one linked to the autonomy of the discipline.59 This question of autonomy is considered further in subsequent chapters and examined in detail in the closing chapter which examines aspects of Eisenman’s teaching. Taken in turn, the two key characteristics – that of critical history and autonomy – provide a useful outline formulation of assumptions underlying the historical project. Eisenman’s decades-long efforts have contributed to establishing the conditions of possibility for such a history and give us several models of how such a critical history might function, which problems might surface within the discipline (such as column/wall oscillations), and what kinds of drawings and models might illustrate them. 2.3.3  Common Denominators The survey of the four texts suggests a commensurate range of approaches to close reading in architecture, including key design elements, form effects, and types of drawings. Table 2.1 vertically maps out the point of view, key composition devices, spatial effects, and drawing type for each of the four texts, the latter displayed horizontally according to the year of publication. Differences are charted and in so doing certain findings can start to be formed including a further development of a periodisation of Eisenman’s thinking, however provisional, discussed in the opening chapter.

52  Part I Table 2.1  Comparative mapping of elements across four historical writings Swerves Point of view, themes

Form generation strategies, devices, effects Title of text

Year of publication

Absolute condition Modernist sensibility Object Transformation The column Directional Tension

Conceptual Formal universals

The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture

From Object to Relationship

Ambiguity Cutting Erosion Layering

1963

1971 20 years

Postmodern Critical No future: only Possibilities present and past Impossibility Decomposition Indeterminacy Types Inversion Whole fragments Physical displacement Break The Futility of Terragni and the Objects: Idea of a Decomposition Critical Text and the Processes of Difference 1984 2003 20 years

One important finding of the analysis illustrated in Table 2.1 is the existence of a break in the mid 1980s, one hinged in part around Eisenman’s relation to or use of time. I expand on this in the next chapter. A second finding is that for Eisenman certain impossibilities appear in architecture. These are formulated in a range of categories as the exclusion or exhaustion of facts or ideas and more generally of architectural conditions. The origin and impact of these impossibilities – and the subsequent explicit turn to the possible in Eisenman’s (2003) text on Terragni at the end of the period under examination – is returned to in the analyses in Part II. A third potential finding is the existence of two 20-year clusters from the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s and the mid 1980s to the mid 2000s. While no doubt overly neat, there is some evidence to support it. Eisenman’s collected essays roughly follow this periodisation. The first volume, Inside Out, collects writings between 1963 and 1988 and the second, Written into the Void, writings between 1990 and 2004. The track record of projects mapped in Diagram Diaries also more or less aligns with this division.60 If there is one common denominator in the essays under review, it is an ability to open up alternate sensibilities. As I suggested above, these alternate sensibilities differ from those derived out of part-to-whole relationships to take only one trait of what Eisenman has characterised as classical or modern sensibilities. This is to return to the idea of open-ended theory that concludes ‘The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture.’ There is some merit in returning

History 53 at this stage to the 1963 thesis, not only on grounds of method and intent but also in terms of the content of historical analysis as a working on architecture’s past. If we return to the beginning, we get a further sense of the role of Eisenman’s approach to history, of his attitude towards ‘history as an analytical and theoretical medium, rather than as a descriptive discipline.’61 A non-synthetic project, I would argue that the perpetual theory machine set up in 1963 is in motion all along. It is underlying all four texts, animating them with a force of constant oscillation. The citation that opens this section, written some 40 years later, echoes this aim of having historical work serve as a ‘template of possibilities’ for the future.62 The historical writing project of Eisenman – at least as found in the four texts examined – can thus also be claimed to mime over the decades the formal and conceptual effects of Giuliani-Frigerio and its defining characteristics as described by Eisenman. As in his reading of Giuliani-Frigerio, in Eisenman’s practice of close reading that is, there is no single privileged point of view. The four texts have a non-narrative relationship one to the other, with conceptual figures in constant oscillation: there is an absence of internal layering among or across the four texts. This cumulative fact of a constantly open and potential future – of ideas and forms, of processes, and of alternative possibilities both spatial and of general disposition – can be considered one of the most profound, productive, and creative effects of Eisenman’s historical writing. This effect resonates in projects from the 1980s and 1990s considered in Part II.

Notes 1 Peter Eisenman, “Foreword: [Bracket]ing History,” in Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism, Anthony Vidler (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2008), x. 2 Peter Eisenman, Ten Canonical Buildings 1950-2000 (New York: Rizzoli, 2008), 16. 3 Peter Eisenman, “The Big Little Magazine: Perspecta 12 and the Future of the Architectural Past,” Architectural Forum 131, no. 3 (1969): 75. 4 Stan Allen, “Eisenman’s Canon: A Counter-Memory of the Modern,” in Ten Canonical Buildings 1950–2000, Peter Eisenman (New York: Rizzoli, 2008), 10. 5 Raphael Moneo, Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects, trans. Gina Cariño (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004), 170. 6 Moneo, Theoretical Anxiety, 174. 7 Pier Vittorio Aureli, “Mannerism, or the ‘Manner’ at the Time of Eisenman,” in Peter Eisenman. Barefoot on White-Hot Walls, ed. Peter Noever (Vienna, Hatje Cantz, 2004), 69. 8 Aureli, “Mannerism,” 69. 9 The exhibition was co-curated by Eisenman and Matt Roman and held at the Yale School of Architecture in October 2012.

54  Part I 10 Anthony Vidler, “Palladio Reassessed by Eisenman,” The Architectural Review 1389 (November 2012): 92. 11 Peter Eisenman and Jeffrey Kipnis, “Interview: Peter Eisenman with Jeff Kipnis,” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 232 (January 1990): 173. 12 Peter Eisenman, “The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture” (PhD diss., Cambridge University, 1963. Facsimile reprint, Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2006), 57. 13 Eisenman, “The Formal Basis,” 321. 14 Eisenman, “The Formal Basis,” 321. 15 Eisenman, “The Formal Basis,” 335. 16 Eisenman, “The Formal Basis,” 108, 134. 17 On this point, the mass readings set out in figures 3, 4, 5, and 6 (page 294) and figure 27 (page 306) are indicative of the general effort. Eisenman, “The Formal Basis.” 18 Eisenman, “The Formal Basis,” 334. 19 Eisenman, “The Formal Basis,” 133. 20 Eisenman, “The Formal Basis,” 332–335. 21 Peter Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II: Giuseppe Terragni, Casa Giuliani Frigerio,” Perspecta 13/14 (1971): 38. 22 Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II,” 39. 23 Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II,” 40, 60. 24 Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II,” 41. 25 Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II,” 61. 26 Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II,” 42. 27 For the mass reading, see in particular Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II,” 42, figures 3, 4. 28 Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II,” 52, figures 29, 30; and 53-54, figures 31–34. 29 Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II,” 42. 30 Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II,” 47. 31 Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II,” 51. 32 Eisenman, “The Formal Basis,” 313. 33 Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II,” 52. 34 Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II,” 61. 35 Peter Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Difference,” Harvard Architecture Review 3 (1984): 78. 36 Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects,” 78. 37 Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects,” 78. 38 Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects,” 70. 39 Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects,” 73. Look in particular at illustrations 40, 41, 46, and 47 (pages 75, 76) of the article. 40 Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal… Part II,” Perspecta 13/14 (1971): 287–301. 41 Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects,” 67. 42 Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects,” 73. See also Rowe and Slutzky, “Transparency,” 300. 43 Rowe and Slutzky, “Transparency,” 300. 44 Peter Eisenman, Written into the Void: Selected Writings, 1990–2004 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 126–132. 45 Peter Eisenman, Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2003), 296. 46 Eisenman, Giuseppe Terragni, 9, 295. See also: Peter Eisenman, Inside Out: Selected Writings, 1963–1988 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), vii.

History 55 47 Eisenman, Giuseppe Terragni, 298. 48 Eisenman, Giuseppe Terragni, 300. 49 Eisenman, Giuseppe Terragni, 300. 50 Illustrations 268, 269, 271–273 (pages 166–169) of Giuseppe Terragni provide the cleanest illustration of the point of view and design questions at work. 51 Eisenman, Giuseppe Terragni, 296. 52 Eisenman, Giuseppe Terragni, 299. 53 Peter Eisenman, “The Diagram as a Space of Difference: The MAK Exhibition,” in Peter Eisenman: Barefoot on White-Hot Walls, ed. Peter Noever (Vienna: Hatje Cantz, 2004), 15. 54 Eisenman, “The Formal Basis,” 343. 55 Eisenman, “The Formal Basis,” 343, 344. 56 Eisenman, “The Big Little Magazine,” 104. 57 Eisenman, “The Big Little Magazine,” 75. 58 Peter Eisenman, “Fame as the Avatar of History,” Perspecta 37 (2005): 165. 59 Eisenman, “Fame as the Avatar of History,” 171. 60 Peter Eisenman, Diagram Diaries (London: Thames & Hudson, 1999), see especially 238, 239. 61 Eisenman, “The Big Little Magazine,” 74. See also Eisenman, “The Formal Basis,” 343. 62 Eisenman, Inside Out, 15.

Bibliography Allen, Stan. “Eisenman’s Canon: A Counter-Memory of the Modern.” In Ten Canonical Buildings 1950–2000, edited by Peter Eisenman, 9–12. New York: Rizzoli, 2008. Aureli, Pier Vittorio. “Mannerism, or the ‘Manner’ at the Time of Eisenman.” In Peter Eisenman. Barefoot on White-Hot Walls, edited by Peter Noever, 66–74. Vienna: Hatje Cantz, 2004. Eisenman, Peter. “Fame as the Avatar of History.” Perspecta 37 (2005): 164–171. Eisenman, Peter. “Foreword: [Bracket]ing History.” In Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism, Anthony Vidler, vii-xii. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2008. Eisenman, Peter. “From Object to Relationship II: Giuseppe Terragni, Casa Giuliani Frigerio.” Perspecta 13/14 (1971): 36–61. Eisenman, Peter. “The Big Little Magazine: Perspecta 12 and the Future of the Architectural Past.” Architectural Forum 131, no. 3 (1969): 74–75, 104. Eisenman, Peter. “The Diagram as a Space of Difference: The MAK Exhibition.” In Peter Eisenman: Barefoot on White-Hot Walls, edited by Peter Noever, 14–22. Vienna: Hatje Cantz, 2004. Eisenman, Peter. “The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Difference.” Harvard Architecture Review 3 (1984): 64–81. Eisenman, Peter. Diagram Diaries. London: Thames & Hudson, 1999. Eisenman, Peter. Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2003. Eisenman, Peter. Ten Canonical Buildings 1950-2000. New York: Rizzoli, 2008. Eisenman, Peter. Written into the Void: Selected Writings, 1990–2004. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Eisenman, Peter and Jeffrey Kipnis. “Interview: Peter Eisenman with Jeff Kipnis.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 232 (January 1990): 170–182.

56  Part I Eisenman, Peter. The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture. PhD diss., Cambridge University, 1963. Facsimile reprint, Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2006. Moneo, Raphael. Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects. Translated by Gina Cariño. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004. Rowe, Colin and Slutzky Robert. “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal… Part II.” Perspecta 13/14 (1971): 287–301. Vidler, Anthony. “Palladio Reassessed by Eisenman.” The Architectural Review 1389 (November 2012): 88–93.

3

Time When

3.1 When interrogating time in Peter Eisenman’s writing and work, one needs to be attentive to the slippages and misdirections, the various twists and turns that the already loaded idea and the trope of time can take on. While acknowledging such swerves, and the surprises and possible frustrations that arise from permutations and pivots in focus and emphasis, one has to also acknowledge up front that for Eisenman such turns are part and parcel of the job. As a measure of evidence for this, Vincent Scully can be called upon to validate such swings in the life and work of certain architects. One turns to Scully as he had a way of characterising the postures of the temperament of Frank Lloyd Wright, for example, that might be beneficial in at least tentatively coming to grips with Eisenman’s work on this topic. If one reads closely, Scully had a turn of phrase about changes and swerves in Wright and architectural discourse more broadly that he formulated so as to avoid any implication of evolution, direction, growth, or synthesis. Wright, and part of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries revealed for Scully conditions that, on the one hand, defied fixations among seemingly static architectural elements (walls, ceiling, floors). On the other hand, Scully identified in certain architectural acts conceptual sensibilities that blurred assumed stylistic and typologically irreconcilable polarities.1 Such qualities might be used to characterise aspects of Eisenman’s thinking. One also needs to establish some datum, however provisional, to the term of time and its multiple manifestations. Such a datum necessarily includes or references, among others, the following aspects: duration, fabric, memory, and texture. Such a datum also contains allusions to a moment, whether the new (as difference or innovation) or the contemporary (as in a present time). The latter, for example, is the pretext for Zaha Hadid’s sense of time in architecture as articulated in her contribution to the Anytime conference that comes near the end of the period being considered in this book. The ten-conference cycle was launched with Anyone (Los Angeles, 1991), followed by Anywhere (Yufuin, Japan, 1992), Anyway (Barcelona 1993), Anyplace (Montréal, 1994), Anywise (Seoul, 1995), Anybody (Bueno Aires, DOI: 10.4324/9780429059964-5

58  Part I 1996), Anyhow (Rotterdam, 1997), Anytime (Ankara, 1998), Anymore (Paris, 1999), and Anything (New York, 2000). The question of time was at work most emphatically across the papers and presentations in the eighth of the Any conferences and several are considered in what follows. Hadid’s contribution to the 1998 conference occurs in the context of prefacing remarks to a more developed description of a small set of then current projects. Hadid provides a position from which to think about – or not, in a deliberate practice of forgetting – time. She remarks: ‘I would like to address these issues of time, of oscillation and the ambition of the new … not only in terms of its conceptual significance but also in terms of the chronological development of my projects.’2 I return to Hadid later in the chapter to expand on her remarks. Alongside the many thematic considerations, time evoked and more or less overtly rolled out as a theoretical concern and formal-spatial condition is an architectural ambition which comes in and out of focus in Eisenman’s writing and projects in these years. Take the case of Banyoles Olympic Hotel (Barcelona, 1989). The project is distinguished, according to Eisenman, as an exploration of three different trace conditions of the time. These conditions in turn are said to displace at least one hierarchical couple, in this case that which situates building as primary and landscape as secondary. These trace conditions, according to Eisenman’s description, manifest a past, present, and future time. He writes: ‘It [the landscape as part of the building’s displacement] exists as three different trace conditions of time… the trace of time past as represented in the form of the agricultural divisions…; the trace of time present in the extension of the building form into the landscape; and the trace of two motions related to the sweep on an eight oared shell and the sliding of the seats of a shell.’3 This last presumably is rendering the trace of some future time. From one perspective, Eisenman’s framing of the discussion of Banyoles in terms of time places ideas in that project on the side of the ambiguous and the undecidable. Formatted differently, the ideas exist in relationship to chance and the random, all qualities Eisenman places on the side of the not classical, the not modern. According to Eisenman, these traits are contrary to classical-modern conventions of the ordered, the hierarchical, and the intentional and, in turn, to an idea of time as directional and linear. As discussed in Chapter 1, such an ambition to conceive of a not-classical architecture by Eisenman is consistent with an underlying stance of resistance. The variations or techniques employed to that end can then be claimed to take on certain tactics. These include the tactic of displacement, an underlying quality in Eisenman’s work on time in architecture and discussed in some detail in Chapter 1. If we extrapolate the terms, and temporarily shift the lens to another protagonist, the premise behind what is at stake in work on time is, if not fully explicated, at least suggested. For Eisenman, one of the most important tasks for the architect is to establish a storia in the sense of Alberti. That is, a fiction or history that will allow architecture to develop. I’m referring to

Time When 59 Eisenman’s suggestion that for Alberti, the painter’s task, and by analogy the task of the architect, is necessarily defined in relation to an idea of and a certain kind of working on time. For Eisenman, it was Alberti who first said that painting’s most important task was to establish a storia, a fiction about time and history. The important job of the painter (by analogy the architect) is to establish a history that would allow painting (by analogy the discipline of architecture) to develop.4 This idea is outlined emphatically by Eisenman when he writes: ‘The history [of painting for Alberti] required there to be a subject, and from that, a relationship between the subject and the object … At this point the object becomes more than just a thing. Because it now has a history, it begins to have a form, a representation, and a meaning, and thus a metaphysic beyond its being, which reads into being, into form.’5 The story of the time that accompanies many of the projects considered in Part II of this book occupied Eisenman over the 1980s and into the 1990s. In fact, one little recognised preoccupation is this undercurrent of time. Largely uninterrogated to date, in favour of the vast and appropriately seductive body of discourses, knowledge, and disciplines whose language and structure of reference are formal, geometric, spatial, or otherwise theoretical, there are relatively few commentaries on time in Eisenman. Thus, a focused consideration may add to understanding the architect and by extension provide a gloss to the architectural culture of the period. As suggested, the theme of time is signally characteristic of Eisenman’s work from these years. By which means and to what end is Eisenman concerned with the introduction of time into the architecture itself? Which are the characteristics of time in the concomitant design work? Which dislocations result from these moves? Framed differently, what function is assigned to time (variously identified with history, memory, and form among other forms) such that an effect of discontinuity, dislocation, disruption results, and a non-directional, non-linear sense of time not only appears but also makes itself felt? Continuing to build on these frames, one can claim Eisenman’s resistance to concepts of stability, development, progress, linearity, and directionality demonstrates a positive preoccupation with time. The above primary questions should be expanded to include other secondary ones. What is the relation between Eisenman’s use of time and the new? Does the question of architectural time and the specificity of Eisenman’s mode of thinking time for architecture also suggest a relation to the new and the contemporary? Is the contemporary really a concern for Eisenman? Is there a way of conceptualising and deploying time such that it is independent of the new and the contemporary?

3.2 In what follows, I first consider time as used in a set of writings by Eisenman. Following on from that, there is a review of secondary considerations by colleagues, critics, and commentators. Two texts which occupy the early

60  Part I phase, chronologically, of the period under review have already been considered in the opening chapter: ‘The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Differentiation’ and ‘The End of the Classical.’ This chapter adds to our understanding of time in Eisenman’s thinking at this moment, expanding on certain of the heuristic devices explored in ‘The Futility’ essay whose job it was according to Eisenman to ‘confound’ progressive time.6 In this way, the architect again reveals a position of resistance. Consider how Eisenman uses Venetian villas in the essay ‘The Futility of Objects.’ In a very direct way, the conjectural reconstructions of latent but always absent states of architectural projects distinguish an aspect of Eisenman’s work in these years. As one starting point, Eisenman’s contribution to the 1998 Anytime conference at the end of the period under review can be used to launch discussions about time in his work and writing. Eisenman’s conference paper is situated in a section titled ‘Rethinking Space and Time,’ itself framed around topics the contributions as published address or allude to mostly indirectly. In his paper, Eisenman suggests a way of thinking differently about memory and time in relation to architectural works. He also claims in retrospect that it was the appearance of a different subject, an other architect, signalled in those years by Eisenman’s response to the project of Rossi that is in part at play. Perhaps. For alongside the new subject, there is also evidence of an idea of the city. Running through many variations, the city – evoked as a palimpsest in Berlin, quarry in Romeo and Juliet, history mapped as fiction in Long Beach – appears alongside an interest in different strategies for generating form. Some specific opportunities in the projects discussed in Part II support this interpretation. We need to interrogate specific ideas of the city, for such instances are never simply or usefully resolved in generalities. And there are specific cities in this period: whether Venice, Verona, Long Beach, and Berlin, or Cincinnati, Sienna, Frankfurt, Tours, Madrid, Seoul, Tokyo, and Yokohama. The cities in turn call out different figurative strategies for form generation as a record of an idea of time. Tracking the theme or problem of time in the period writing of Eisenman reveals at least six different formulations, six different realms in which time resonates as a distinguishing characteristic or concern in his architectural thinking and writing. There is time as selective memory, offered in a 1983 statement: ‘The architectural object is forgetful.’7 So writes Eisenman in a text originally prepared for a 1983 pamphlet on the occasion of an exhibition held at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and devoted to his Center for the Arts project for Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In this formulation, architecture works to forge a disappearance of any memory of time: it is an act of erasure. Another realm of time’s deployment can be seen in the appearance of the question of architectural presence, a term rampant across the period

Time When 61 of the mid 1970s to mid 1990s. The question of presence and presentness appears throughout this period. The clearest and most extended development of the idea is in the text ‘Presentness and the “Being-Only-Once” of Architecture.’ This essay was first delivered as part of a conference in 1993 and later published as a chapter in a book edited by Anselm Haverkamp titled Deconstruction is/in America.8 In the essay, time is positioned as presence formulated in a perpetual state of difference and repetition. There is also a formulation of time as a kind of intensity manifested as unstable and chance-like in, for example, the blurring lines of Banyoles. A concern of Eisenman since the late 1980s, this blurring action in architecture seeks to destabilise ‘the conceptual as well as the physical clarity of elements such as figure and ground.’9 This idea of blurring is an essential consideration in any analysis of time in Eisenman. Time is also found in strategies of superposition and scaling, the fourth and perhaps most developed temporality. Eisenman is endlessly searching for devices that engender new conditions, conditions that manifest or open new possibilities that contribute to destabilising the centrisms of origins and ends and thus of a linear idea of time. It can be claimed that in a similar, though different, manner, the notion of superposition in projects such as Romeo and Juliet does just that. Scaling is rolled out in Romeo and Juliet, and again in Tokyo Opera House, and can also be described alternately as compression and at the same instance attenuation. Let’s look at more detailed developments of this realm of time’s deployment. Eisenman publishes ‘Editor’s Introduction: The Houses of Memory: The Texts of Analogue’ in 1982 to accompany an English language version of Aldo Rossi’s L’Architettura della citta as edited by Eisenman and Rossi. The introduction to The Architecture of the City can be interpreted as a symptom of Eisenman’s own preoccupations at the period of its writing, a concern for a current of activities that would engage with at least three levels or three states that Eisenman identifies as an other architecture, an other architect, and an other process. Eisenman reserves for this latter state the highest importance. To process, in the Editor’s Introduction, Eisenman suggests that it is Rossi’s reintroduction of the elements of history and typology that distinguishes Rossi’s process.10 The second section of Eisenman’s text includes a long citation from Freud’s Civilisation and its Discontents. The same text by Freud will be again used by Eisenman in his ‘Architecture and the Problem of the Rhetorical Figure’ published in 1987. History, accepting Eisenman’s reading of Rossi, is analogous to a skeleton and specifically the skeleton as a measure of time. In turn, the city is taken as the material manifestation of architecture’s history. ‘The new time of architecture [for Eisenman reading Rossi] is thus that of memory, which replaces history.’11 Eisenman continues to describe the architect’s activity as one of disruption and dislocation. Disruption and dislocation of certain values or

62  Part I conditions that, he argues, constrain the practice of architecture, binding it to certain limits. Two elements or values are claimed to be dislocated by Rossi’s project in the period following the initial publication of The Architecture of the City. The values of place and scale, Eisenman suggests, are dislodged from positions of disciplinary stability by Rossi. As Eisenman writes: ‘The subversive analogues proposed in Rossi’s work involve two kinds of transformation. One is the dislocation of place, the other the dislocation of scale.’12 As we will see, together can be argued to define another relation to time, one that finds specific translation years later. Romeo and Juliet is announced specifically to be about a placeless, scaleless, and timeless other architecture with the potential to destabilise. As Eisenman writes about the process of scaling: ‘Scaling yields a new mode of architectural intervention which has the potential to destabilize the heretofore intransigent and now untenable centrisms of the metaphysics of architecture: first, the value that architecture gives to presence; and, second, the value that architecture gives to origin.’13 This echo the displacement of values raised in the closing section of ‘The End of the Classical’ discussed in Chapter 1. The specific time at work in ‘House of Memory: Texts of Analogue,’ to return to the opening question in this section, and close off this disquisition on the temporality founded in concerns with acts of superposition and scaling includes, according to Eisenman, a description of the role and qualities of an other architect. This other architect is distinguished according to Eisenman from the humanist architect of the sixteenth century as well as the functionalist architecture of the twentieth. Here is Eisenman on this point: ‘Proposing an other architecture, on other architect, and most importantly, an other process for their understanding, it can be seen as an attempt to break not only from the traditional humanist definition of the relationship of object and subject, but also from the more recent modernist one.’14 This is a relatively rare moment in Eisenman’s writing in which he reflects specifically on the role and process of the architect per se and might thus support giving greater attention to it. A fifth elaboration of time’s activities and thus a specific move worth unpacking and giving attention to, Eisenman describes a shift that impacts the location of the architectural idea away from the subject and object and into the work as a process. Eisenman writes: ‘… the process of the work … must [now] assume the forces which formerly were contained in the subject and the object.’15 Frederic Jameson suggests a further variable in the notion of a lawless architecture in the latter’s 1991 Wellek Library Lectures in Critical Theory, published as The Seeds of Time. For Jameson, a sensibility at work in Eisenman in such projects as Ohio State and Romeo and Juliet constitutes a manifestation of this beyond modern condition. It is one qualified around a new idea of history and time. One that is different from simple dialectics. Jameson writes: ‘I believe that Eisenman’s specific new historicity is to be grasped as a response to this immediate form-problem: seen this way, it is

Time When 63 not a stylistic option or embellishment but an unavoidable next move.’16 This is time as beyond historical movements. Finally, a sixth formulation of architecture’s potential temporality emerges in the idea of time as text. A specific quality is Eisenman’s testimony around an architecture of multivalency. This occurs when Eisenman broaches the idea of a multivalent architecture in an article first published in 1988 in Thresholds, a journal published by the MIT Department of Architecture. Eisenman titles the article ‘Architecture as a Second Language: The Texts of Between.’ In ‘Architecture as a Second Language,’ Eisenman emphatically postulates on a multivalent architecture, one that would dislocate time and place. In so doing he theorises what he calls ‘textual time,’ a time different from a temporal experience of architecture as external.17 Textual time for Eisenman is emphatically internal to architecture. Time is textual, according to Eisenman in this essay, such that it is introduced ‘into architecture.’18 The idea of text used by Eisenman is bound to, though transformed from, the thinking of Jacque Derrida. Eisenman curiously does not footnote citations from Derrida near the beginning of this article in announcing recent developments that have allowed or enabled one to discuss an architectural text, how it functions, and its characteristics. Yet, perhaps more important to Eisenman’s argument is Derrida’s notion of text. According to Derrida, a text is a ‘differential network, a fabric of traces referring endlessly to something other than itself, to other differential traces.’19 This is expanded by Kipnis as discussed below.

3.3 A number of themes are considered in this part of the chapter which, as discussed above, turns to critics and commentators on time in Eisenman. I use twin bracketing strata established by Hubert Damisch on the one side and Zaha Hadid on the other as points or orientation supplemented by reference to a cluster of other important readings of time around what might be called an Eisenmanian temporality. The two are placed adjacent to one another in the published proceedings of the 1998 Anytime conference, the eighth in the multidisciplinary conferences which sought to explore the condition of architecture at the end of the millennium. Thus, their conceptualising brackets the end of the middle period under review. Damisch’s take on time and architecture can be summarised as one concerned with duration, expressed in shorthand as fabric. Damisch, without explicit reference, reports on this alignment turning to Man Ray’s film critique of the Villa Noailles as support. The film is taken by Damisch as an illustration of the relations between architecture and what he calls the texture of time. Time in itself is too obtuse an idea or condition. For Damisch, as for Hadid and for Tschumi, the relation is always necessarily read through a fabric or texture of conditions.

64  Part I What is the matter with duration anyway? Thus asks Damisch and in providing a response to the question, an additional frame to understanding time in Eisenman is generated. In a 1932 lecture on the Story of Amphion, Valéry referred to duration as the equivalent of memory and the equivalent of form: ‘duration, that is say memory, that is to say form.’ Thus writes Damisch in the published version of his contribution to the 1998 Anytime conference.20 Despite the density of the prose, and the sense that we are again in the middle of a longer commentary that will be picked up and pushed along by Damisch in other settings, the terms of the discussion can still be usefully isolated. In this fragment, three terms are recalled to frame a mutually impactful contribution to time and architecture. Time is never singular, and for Damisch, he finds it useful and perhaps necessary to refer to the fabric of time. The fabric of time allows a discussion of a number of aspects. These include, by implication, that the notion of position is a measure of time and architecture independent of space. Without explication by the author, one can speculate that the title of Bernard Tschumi’s contribution to the 1998 conference conflates terms. According to Tschumi, from that ‘old structuralist diagram,’ the structuralist temperament conceives of two specific times in architecture. On the horizontal plane is located synchronic time and on the vertical plane diachronic time is located. Combining the two one gets dia(chronic) plus sync(hronic) or ‘diasync.’ Perhaps the quality of time in Eisenman’s architecture easiest to conceive is that resulting from an operation of folding, such that two surface events or conditions are brought into a rapport. In this case, time is precisely that interval or gap between the two events or conditions. Kurt Forster starts to suggest this capacity in some of Eisenman’s projects. This capacity, that is, to collapse events or histories. In so doing, and in that collapse, memory can be considered as the face of a past condition as well as a still-to-be-realised future project to be both retained and projected. This projecting forward can be examined in relation to Eisenman’s contribution to the restricted international competition for South Friedrichstadt housing for instance. A decade later, this idea is laid out by Forster in a postscript to an essay originally published in 1981 at the time of the competition. Foster bemoans the only partial realisation of the Eisenman/Robertson scheme. Were the project as projected to have been realised, Forster conjectures that their Berlin project would have collapsed the entire urban history of the city in one spot. 21 Forster writes: ‘Had Eisenman’s original project … taken shape … it might well offer the only site in town where both past and present become transparencies of the future, where a coin of vantage on time itself rises out of the rushing stream of history.’22 This is to propose for the architectural project a veritable time machine. However, more than in the past, it can be argued that Eisenman endeavours to overlay the project with a still to materialise future Berlin. So how

Time When 65 to reconcile the two? There is still no clear response to this question. And perhaps it is the wrong question for the moment for this architect who has intentionally eschewed closure, reconciliation, and stability in favour of openings, displacements, and imbalances. In continuing to look at secondary authors who have reflected on Eisenman’s work for many years, Tadao Ando provides a different take. In a text published in 1990, Ando provides a particularly apt and dense analysis of time in Eisenman’s work. Ando’s piece appears in a special issue of A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) devoted to Eisenman’s period work. Published projects include Banyoles Olympic Hotel, the College of Design Architecture Art and Planning project for the University of Cincinnati then in design development, and a long dossier on the under construction Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, The Ohio State University (competition 1983, completion 1989). After some general observations, Ando asks: ‘What is it that maintains an intermediate existence between architectural space and geometric space? This is Eisenman’s conception of time.’23 Ando then goes on to expand on this idea and it is worth citing him at length to reveal the nature and range of architectural conditions at play. Ando writes: ‘Quite different from the historical concept of time, Eisenman’s idea is that of time imprisoned in space. His most remarkable discovery is the insight that time is active, that it moves space, and precisely that the operation of time on space is oscillation. Indeed, this is his greatest contribution to the architectural world.’ Ando continues: ‘Oscillation is that phenomenon whereby many spatial insights and perceptions are generated from one form: it is A, and it is simultaneously B; it is a solid, and it is simultaneously a void. His insight is that layering and stratification are continually turning into one another. The motion hidden within a single form is brought out, and it is precisely the enjoyment of this released motion that constitutes the life of architecture, imparting depth and dynamism to its space.’24 Let’s take the ideas and associated implications of this version of architectural time bit by bit as they address so many aspects of Eisenman’s project and the thematic focus on the time of this chapter. There is an idea of time latent to architecture for Eisenman which is different from a historical concept of time. There is also that claim of time as active, as acting via various means, here, for Ando, termed simultaneity and oscillation, terms given to call out certain mutually impactful operations of time and space. The term oscillation is suggested by Ando to be Eisenman’s ‘greatest contribution to the architectural world.’ Ando goes on to suggest that there is motion within a single architectural form, whether of movement as a trace of some kind of animating force or as the palpable effect of certain conditions that arise in the buildings experience. For this latter, one would also need to consider Eisenman’s reference to architecture’s pleasure, a state related to the release of these motions. Time and its relation to depth and dynamism are qualities associated with

66  Part I architectural space; however, in this instance, both terms are contrary to the temporality at work. The idea of simultaneity resonates with Eisenman’s idea of superposition and scaling, part of the repertoire of design techniques in this time and available since at least Romeo and Juliet while also called on in Tokyo Opera House, and in a different manner IBA Social Housing (Berlin). A final characteristic from this section is what might be described as the architect’s ambition to release movement otherwise contained or constrained by built form. In the same issue of A+U (Architecture and Urbanism), Jeffrey Kipnis alludes to this quality of simultaneity and oscillation, though does not turn towards a discussion of time as a field of impact. Different from an architecture of dislocation or exile, Kipnis talks about Eisenman’s work as rendering a condition of ‘undecidability.’25 This can be claimed to be another aspect of Eisenman’s time. Kipnis goes on to expand on this idea. He writes: ‘Such works [as Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, Banyoles Olympic Hotel, and College of DAAP] resist, defer and destabilize meaning by lending themselves to many frames while not allowing any particular frame to gain a foothold from which to narrow and confine the work to one particular meaning.’26 Though we have considered the question of resistance in Chapter 1, it is appropriate to consider Kipnis’ suggestion here in this discussion of time. The reference by Kipnis to a posture of undecidability is another way to consider the ways and means by which Eisenman arrives at various states of oscillation, to return to Ando’s term. Kipnis affords a way to think of how these large terms – time, memory, history – distinguish Eisenman’s writing and projects. Elizabeth Grosz provides a further useful way to frame an approach to the question of time in the work of Eisenman. In the introduction to an anthology of essays dealing with concepts and practices of time, becoming, and ‘the open-endedness of the future,’ Grosz writes: ‘It (time) suffers, or produces, a double displacement: from becoming to being, and from temporal to spatial.’27 Grosz argues that thinkers of time have positioned logic of time independent of logic of space. Key aspects include a position relative to chance or the arbitrary on the one hand and a position relative to the new or the contemporary on the other. In this staging, she provides another frame for considering Eisenman’s time. There is a back and forth, a resonance to both uses of time by Hadid and also Damisch in the ways in which time is conceived in the writings and projects of Eisenman. There is a plane of convergence in other words around the problem of time and temporality in otherwise disparate writings and projects. This plane of convergence harmonises or at minimum synchronises in a cluster of concepts and devices. All this seems to have some validation in the merit in considering the unpublished typescript from Colin Rowe around this time (the editor David

Time When 67 Naegele dates it to the mid 1990s) and in recalling Ortega y Gasset who can be so seductively cited, which is not to imply that the notions or concepts created by Ortega are in any way any less prescient or powerful. Prescient in recalling earlier references by Rowe and powerful in their capacity to gather al nuce all the subtle implications in Eisenman’s allusions to the surface and their relation to understanding the reach and implications of certain aspects of the idea of time in this period. I turn to Rowe’s essay initially due to the unused title announced by Rowe, ‘The Presence of Absence’ because it so clearly overlaps with the preoccupations of Eisenman in these years. The surface-depth couple becomes another way to approach and circle around endlessly without arriving at a single or simple position about how Eisenman thinks about time as an architect or positions the architectural project in relation to a notion of time (and not space or volume). Is the question about a temporality specific to the thinking and projects of Eisenman in the 1980s and 1990s relevant? On looking at the titles of the papers, and thematic preoccupations of the projects, there appears to be evidence of this. In what manner and by what means does this fascination with surface and depth, and with Ortega in particular, provide one singularly useful trope for discussion of this material? The source of all this stimulation at this stage in the analysis is an unpublished lecture which was partially transcribed and posted on a blog in 2020 as part of Colin Rowe Centenary celebrations. With the unassuming title ‘Even the Villa Schwob,’ Rowe’s lecture refers to themes that appear in Eisenman’s period writing and can serve as a way to start to wrap up this chapter. These include the compaction of depth and surface so that they are indistinguishable; the always only appearance of depth in one surface, whether as space and/or time; and the critical need alongside or in front of materiality to recognise architecture’s virtual life, in other words to adopt a position specifically not about the visual. 28 To bracket off this survey of observers of time at work in Eisenman, we turn to Zaha Hadid. Hadid’s contribution to the 1998 Anytime conference discusses strategies that lead to a liberation of space and, in turn one can claim, provides a condition of possibilities of a future-oriented temporality in contradistinction to new ideas of time: new conditions for architecture’s response to present time, the architectonic translating new possibilities. Different from Damisch, the architect uses the discussion of time and architecture to establish a taxonomy of responses to values of continuity and fragmentation. Here is her retrospective discussion of the 1976 project for the Hungerford Bridge some two decades later. In this project, Hadid argues in 1988 for the benefits resulting from the juxtaposition of ‘two “times”’ such that a superimposition and, in turn, with further effort a ‘hybridization’ occurs.29 The times she refers to appear to be the time of Malevich, here the literal juxtaposition of certain of Malevich’s tektoniks and an existing time. Interestingly, as we discuss below in relation to Bernard Tschumi, it is the

68  Part I realisation that time can be out of joint once one recognises that whereas previously events had been assumed to occur at different times, events ‘could now happen simultaneously.’30 I trial this role of simultaneity in the work and thinking of Eisenman later in this chapter, so for the moment let’s endeavour to see where it takes Hadid as she quickly surveys the 22-year arc of her work and her stated ambition to investigate ‘the process by which the new is produced.’31 The second project discussed by Hadid is the Hong Kong Peak project (1982–1983). Ideas of transience, of organisational fluidity, and of compression are under consideration. For her, the new appears to be about the coexistence of fluidity and compression in the same project. Hadid usefully discusses the importance of representation in relation to design techniques in Hong Kong Peak. The final project discussed is the office’s submission to the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar (1998). In Hadid’s discussion of the Qatar project, one discerns a strategy that could be claimed to imbed time ‘in’ the architectural form. The ambition of a building as tectonic layers suggests that time is etched or contained in the building, and a geography or passage of time is read through the project. This could be interpreted as an ambition to contain time, and thus this discovery of a project concerned with continuity of form through a strategy of fragmentation (or layers of different times) is perhaps the most important lesson. This is different from Eisenman’s if we accept the characterisation discussed earlier of Eisenman’s time as one of releasing forces. This is to suggest that Hadid’s time in architecture is differently focused. For her, at this moment in the mid 1990s, time is understood precisely as a condition of the present: time for architecture is all about the present and specifically about the new that is brought into existence.

3.4 John Rajchman compresses the qualities under discussion. He does this through the formula: ‘Time becomes a form.’32 Rajchman suggests different formulations of architecture’s response to time and to the question: what is an architecture that presents rather than represents time?33 Today we might discern yet another logic, another formulation, and perhaps also another view of time that is different from those evoked thus far. Other tendencies include time ideas from antiquity or medieval ages framed as a memory inscription on or through the building. This can be contrasted with an amnesiac modernist notion of time in architecture, the glass box repulsing and resisting all traces of time. This is itself different from the historicist pastiche of what might be called a postmodernist temporality. A fourth view of time for Rajchman further departs from classical composition, modernist fragmentation, and postmodernist contextualism in favour of what he calls ‘a noniconic diagrammaticity.’34 Perhaps this is another way to think of how Eisenman differs from Rowe, at least as discussed by Eisenman in conversation with Greg Lynn. This

Time When 69 project resonates with comments Eisenman makes some years later in a discussion with Lynn. The comments come in a conversation published in 2014 by the Canadian Centre for Architecture. ‘I was interested in diagram, which is something else [different from Rowe’s parti], and the morphological as opposed to typological.’35 Solà-Morales provides a further way into closing remarks on Eisenman and his relation to time, contrasting differences between time as regulated, corporeal presence and a relation to time that is only ever of an instant: an ever-absent moment. The former is on the side of Chronos whose actions according to Solà-Morales provide a measure of bodies in motion bound in a ‘past, present and future.’36 The latter temperament, in which time has neither depth nor extensibility, is on the side of Aeon. Putting Eisenman on the side of Aeon, one can perhaps now start to imagine, even though it never coming fully into focus, a certain architectural relation with time. From such an optic, Eiseman seems to be back of mind when Solà-Morales writes: ‘With him, everything rises to the surface and becomes instantaneous event. He has no need of the guarantees of gods. He is volatile and provisional. He has fled before we can catch him … he is atopical, without place. … Aeon’s experience cannot be encoded or encapsulated. It erupts, untimely.’37 This echoes fully with what might now be claimed as setting a personal agenda by Eisenman in ‘The End of the Classical.’ To take a final cut at it, maybe it also is all about confusing or distracting time and our infatuation with it. In this sense, the last word can be given to Henry Cobb in his comments about the act and art of controlled remembering. The comments appear in a late lecture by Cobb titled ‘Anamnesis.38 Also configured as intentional forgetting, Cobb sees the gift of anamnesis as part and parcel of the architect’s arsenal of conceptual stances, one that allows the built project to accommodate the messy contingencies of use and technique while proving meaning to these seemingly self-same undecidables. States Cobb: ‘…the flexibility afforded by controlled remembering not only of what we were but in the same emancipatory act of what we might be. [This is] memory as a deliberate act of will that projects one squarely into the stream of history beyond the shackles, the smug certainties, and the petty stakes of the present. Through selective memory the future becomes possible. A future that the past could not think and that the present alone dares not imagine.’39 From this characterisation, Eisenman’s time could be that of an amnesiac, one endlessly to come: a time when that cannot be imagined but is open to all possibilities.

Notes 1 Vincent Scully, “Modern Architecture: Toward a Redefinition of Style,” Perspecta 4 (1957): 5, 6.

70  Part I 2 Zaha Hadid, ‘The Ambition of the New,’ in Anytime, ed. Cynthia C Davidson (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1999), 91. 3 Peter Eisenman, “Banyoles Olympic Hotel Competition,” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 252 (September 1991): 112. 4 Peter Eisenman, “L’ora che è stata,” in Written into the Void. Selected Writings 1990-2004, Peter Eisenman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 114. This essay was originally published in Metafisica, ed. Ester Coen (Milano: Electa, 2003), 98–104. 5 Eisenman, “L’Ora che è stata,” 114. 6 Peter Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Difference,” in Inside Out Selected Writings 1964-1988, Peter Eisenman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 178. The essay was originally published in Harvard Architecture Review 3 (Winter 1984), 64–81. The referenced version in this chapter is that published in Inside Out. 7 Peter Eisenman, “M Emory Games,” in M Emory Games: Emory Center for the Arts, ed. Peter Eisenman (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc, a co-publication with the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, 1995), 58. 8 Anselm Haverkamp, ed., Deconstruction is/in America. A New Sense of the Political (New York: New York University Press, 1995). 9 Peter Eisenman, “Blurred Zones,” in Blurred Zones. Investigations of the Interstitial: Eisenman Architects 1988-1998 (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2003). This text, along with others in Blurred Zones, is dated from the 1990s according to a note by Eisenman. 10 Peter Eisenman, “Editor’s Introduction: The Houses of Memory: The Texts of Analogue,” in The Architecture of the City, Aldo Rossi, revised for the American Edition by Aldo Rossi and Peter Eisenman, trans. Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1982), 5. 11 Eisenman, “The Houses of Memory”, 7. 12 Eisenman, “Houses of Memory,” 9. 13 Peter Eisenman, “Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors”, AA Files 12 (Summer 1986): 77. 14 Eisenman, “The Houses of Memory,” 4, emphasis in the original. 15 Eisenman, “The Houses of Memory,” 5. 16 Frederic Jameson, The Seeds of Time. The Wellek Library Lectures at the University of California, Irvine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 181. 17 Peter Eisenman, “Architecture as a Second Language: The Texts of Between,” Threshold 4 (Spring 1988): 72. 18 Eisenman, “Architecture as a Second Language”, 72. 19 Jacque Derrida, “Living On: Border Line,” in Deconstruction and Criticism, trans. James Hulbert, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979), 84. 20 Hubert Damisch, “Three Minus Two, Two Plus One: Architecture and the Fabric of Time,” in Anytime, ed. Cynthia C Davidson (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1999), 87. 21 Kurt Forster, “Eisenman/Robertson’s City of Artificial Excavation”, in Cities of Artificial Excavation. The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988, ed. JeanFrançois Bédard (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1994), 26. 22 Forster, “City of Artificial Excavation,” 25. 23 Tadao Ando, “Peter Eisenman: Releasing Time Imprisoned in Space,” trans. John D. Lamb, A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 232 (January 1990): 111. 24 Ando, “Releasing Time Imprisoned in Space,” 111.

Time When 71 25 Jeffrey Kipnis, “A Matter of Respect,” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 232 (January 1990): 135. 26 Kipnis, “A Matter of Respect,” 135. 27 Elizabeth Grosz, “Introduction,” in Becomings. Explorations in Time, Memory, and Futures, Elizabeth Grosz (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999), 2. 28 Colin Rowe, “Even the Villa Schwob,” accessed 18-01-2022, https:// colinrowecentenary.wordpress.com/2020/05/08/even-the-villa-schwob/. 29 Hadid, “The Ambition of the New,” 90. 30 Hadid, “The Ambition of the New,” 90. 31 Hadid, “The Ambition of the New,” 90. 32 Rajchman as cited by Bernard Tschumi, the former it appears citing Deleuze. See: Tschumi, “Diasync” in Anytime, ed. Cynthia C Davidson (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1999), 173. 33 John Rajchman, “Time Out,” in Anytime, ed. Cynthia C Davidson (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1999), 153. 34 Rajchman, “Time Out,” 153. 35 Peter Eisenman and Greg Lynn discuss Biozentrum. Biology Center for Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany 1987 (Montréal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2014). Digital publication available in Apple Books. Accessed 14-01-2022, https://books.apple.com/ca/book/peter-eisenmanbiozentrum/id826739623, 20. 36 Ignasi de Solà-Morales, “From Autonomy to Untimeliness,” in Differences. Topographies of Contemporary Architecture, trans. Graham Thompson, ed. Sarah Whiting (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997), 90 37 Solà-Morales, “From Autonomy to Untimeliness,” 90. 38 Henry Cobb, “Anamnesis,” a lecture given on 28 October 2019 at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, accessed 14-01-2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phYYlPaN2wQ. Cobb references an essay by Sanford Kwinter as the source of the idea of anamnesis or controlled remembering. See from 09:50 into the lecture. 39 Cobb, “Anamnesis,” from 10:55.

Bibliography Ando, Tadao. “Peter Eisenman: Releasing Time Imprisoned in Space,” translated by John D. Lamb. A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 232 (January 1990): 110–111. Cobb, Henry. “Anamnesis.” A lecture given on 28 October 2019 at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation. Accessed 14-01-2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phYYlPaN2wQ. Damisch, Hubert. “Three Minus Two, Two Plus One: Architecture and the Fabric of Time.” In Anytime, edited by Cynthia C Davidson, 84–89. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1999. Derrida, Jacques. “Living On: Border Line.” In Deconstruction and Criticism, translated by James Hulbert, edited by Harold Bloom, 75–176. New York: The Seabury Press, 1979. Eisenman, Peter. “Architecture as a Second Language: The Texts of Between.” Threshold 4 (Spring 1988): 71–75. Eisenman, Peter. “Banyoles Olympic Hotel Competition.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 252 (September 1991): 112–127.

72  Part I Eisenman, Peter. “Blurred Zones.” In Blurred Zones. Investigations of the Interstitial: Eisenman Architects 1988-1998, 6–9. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2003. Eisenman, Peter. “Editor’s Introduction: The Houses of Memory: The Texts of Analogue.” In The Architecture of the City, edited by Aldo Rossi, revised for the American Edition by Aldo Rossi and Peter Eisenman, translated by Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman, 2–11. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1982. Eisenman, Peter. “L’ora che è stata.” In Written into the Void. Selected Writings 1990-2004, edited by Peter Eisenman, 113–119. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Eisenman, Peter. “M Emory Games.” In M Emory Games: Emory Center for the Arts, edited by Peter Eisenman, 58–59. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc, a co-publication with the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, 1995. Eisenman, Peter. “Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors.” AA Files 12 (Summer 1986): 77, 79, 81–83. Eisenman, Peter. “The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Difference.” In Inside Out Selected Writings 1964-1988, edited by Peter Eisenman, 169–187. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Eisenman, Peter and Greg Lynn. Eisenman and Greg Lynn Discuss Biozentrum. Biology Center for Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany 1987. Montréal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2014. Digital publication available in Apple Books. Accessed 14-01-2022, https://books.apple.com/ca/book/ peter-eisenman-biozentrum/id826739623. Forster, Kurt. “Eisenman/Robertson’s City of Artificial Excavation.” In Cities of Artificial Excavation. The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988, edited by JeanFrançois Bédard, 19–26. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1994. Grosz, Elizabeth. “Introduction.” In Becomings: Explorations in Time, Memory, and Futures, edited by Elizabeth Grosz, 1–11. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999. Hadid, Zaha. “The Ambition of the New.” In Anytime, edited by Cynthia C Davidson, 90–97. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1999. Haverkamp, Anselm, ed. Deconstruction is/in America. A New Sense of the Political. New York: New York University Press, 1995. Jameson, Frederic. The Seeds of Time. The Wellek Library Lectures at the University of California, Irvine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Kipnis, Jeffrey. “A Matter of Respect.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 232 (January 1990): 134–137. Rajchman, John. “Time Out.” In Anytime, edited by Cynthia C Davidson, 152–157. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1999. Rowe, Colin. “Even the Villa Schwob.” Accessed 18-01-2022, https://colin rowecentenary.wordpress.com/2020/05/08/even-the-villa-schwob/. Scully, Vincent. “Modern Architecture: Toward a Redefinition of Style.” Perspecta 4 (1957): 4–11. Solà-Morales, Ignesi de. “From Autonomy to Untimeliness.” In Differences. Topographies of Contemporary Architecture, translated by Graham Thompson, edited by Sarah Whiting, 72–90. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1997. Tschumi, Bernard. “Diasync.” In Anytime, edited by Cynthia C Davidson, 168–175. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1999.

Part II

 eter D. Eisenman, Architect. Site plan for International Seminary of Design in P the Area of Cannaregio-West, Venice, Italy 1978-1980. DR1991:0017:050. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture

DOI: 10.4324/9780429059964-6

4

Ground

4.1  We launch into an exploration of certain mid 1980s projects of Peter Eisenman across two propositions. The first proposition is that Eisenman’s work, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, provides an alternative approach to thinking architecture’s relation to urban scale form and the city more generally, one less bound to singular spatial types, operational requirements, and overt contextual references in favour of other factors. The second proposition is that certain strategies in search of architectural form have a greater or lesser capacity to register multiple layers and that such layers, whether they be on the side of the topographic, social, programmatic, or theoretic, in turn find manifestation in part in ground manipulations. A number of interconnected themes bracket the analysis and are given an architectural translation in the devices or techniques of scaling, registration, and superposition. It is argued that such techniques provide Eisenman a complex armature to register and control plan, section, and volume dispositions rendered as artificial ground and that such dispositions signal a cut and an edge if not a full break. Such shifts also mark the disappearance of a golden time in Eisenman’s relation to certain architectural urban conditions or concerns and the emergence of other concerns. Ground plane dissonances appear perhaps for the first time in Eisenman’s published projects with the 1978 drawings and model for Cannaregio West Town Square (Venice, 1978). Used more or less intensely in subsequent years, such conceptual ambitions and morphological strategies play a distinctive role in his Romeo and Juliet project (Verona, 1985) presented at the Third International Exhibition of Architecture of the Venice Biennale. They reach a formal and theoretical peak around a decade after Cannaregio with the project for the University Art Museum (Long Beach, California, 1986). Architectural speculations at work in these and other projects from the period are underpinned by a number of questions that address architecture’s potential capacity to express multiple conditions, the theoretical conceit underpinning certain projects from this period. Which formal and theoretical ambitions are at work in these projects? Are there traits present that DOI: 10.4324/9780429059964-7

76  Part II may have the translational capacity to contribute to disciplinary debates about the contemporary urban condition? In other words, might an analysis of select projects reveal new conceptual and figural responses to urban scale strategies that can contribute to embracing and rendering diversity through apparently messy or weak forms, one of Eisenman’s stated conceptual ambitions from this period? In pursuing these questions, this chapter undertakes an analysis of the role and function of the ground. The chapter surveys the ground’s manifestation in manipulations both literal and figurative as released in a series of architectural projects developed between 1978 and 1986. While other projects by Eisenman are discussed, the chapter focuses on the Cannaregio, Romeo and Juliet, and University Art Museum projects. As Eisenman has claimed, this period coincides with a swerve in his practice and conceptual biases. The analysis thus not only interrogates the ground’s formal, spatial, and theoretical aspects and its various manifestations in a limited number of projects but also interrogates the characteristics of this hinge time in Eisenman’s own practice. A number of interconnected themes bracket the analysis with ground considered variously as metaphor given an architectural translation in the devices of scaling, registration, and superposition; as a generative tool, providing Eisenman an armature to register and control plan dispositions; as artificial ground, signalling a cut and an edge; and as marking the disappearance of a golden time and a heretofore stable foundation in Eisenman’s relation to certain architectural conditions. In a retrospective summary of the thematic and formal reach of certain of the projects from the 1980s, Eisenman signals out the swerve that is Cannaregio, writing: ‘The Cannaregio housing project in Venice was the first project to use what might be called an external text in that it is the first of six projects to consider site as an exteriority…’1 Secondary observers also sensed and remarked on this inflection moment. Moneo, for example, notes: ‘Cannaregio can be considered a turning point.’2 In Diagram Diaries, Eisenman suggests there were six projects that constitute the artificial excavation series, six projects that all deal with the site, excavation, and site inventions. The six artificial excavation projects according to Eisenman are Cannaregio, Berlin IBA Housing, Wexner, Romeo and Juliet, University Art Museum, and La Villette.3 Within these six projects, the review reveals a secondary emphasis or reference to gold accompanying Eisenman’s work and thinking on ground manipulations. Gold appears perhaps for the first time in Eisenman’s published projects with the 1978 drawings and model for Cannaregio West Town Square, Venice. Used more or less intensely in subsequent years, gold plays a distinctive role in his Romeo and Juliet project presented at the Third International Exhibition of Architecture of the Venice Biennale, 1985. It disappears about a decade after Cannaregio with the 1986 proposal for the University of California at Long Beach Art Museum. There

Ground 77 it occupies what might be characterised as a background as opposed to a figural role, though that difference, if it is one, is still to be fully tested. The only overt reference in his writings to the choice of gold that I have found is in Three Texts for Venice, published in 1980 alongside drawings and model photos of Cannaregio.4 Essays and interviews contemporaneous with the drawings and models do, however, provide a further articulation of thematic concerns and thus provide additional material on gold’s role in the three projects beyond the evidence contained in project documents. Eisenman alludes to gold’s allegorical and alchemical properties in the Cannaregio text. The gold in Cannaregio, he writes, is ‘the gold of Venice… [symbolising] the mysticism of the alchemist… Giordano Bruno was an alchemist. He practiced the art of memory.’5 For Eisenman, gold signals a potential blurring of a figure versus ground and thus potentially disturbing hierarchical reading. It can thus be used as an index for interpreting the formal and conceptual preoccupations in his work from this period and its engagement with post-structuralism in a general sense. Reference to the alchemical arts of Bruno can be taken as a mirror of the process of superpositioning of forces and forms, a form generative process not to be simply rendered in stable, whole shapes and further qualities of a work on destabilising grounds. The alchemical affinities of gold call for an unstable and ambiguous condition, certain alchemical properties resulting in a fusing together and thus blending and blurring of things. Gold’s fluidity, its potential to be liquid and solid, can be seen as a trope for certain post-structuralist operations so much in the air at that time. This blurring can thus be taken as another rubric linking the three case studies in the analysis that follows. The interrogation of Cannaregio, Romeo and Juliet, and Long Beach is underpinned by a number of questions. What formal and spatial functions does ground manipulation play in each project? More generally, which conceptual strategies and architectural questions are at work in each project, and what are the differences? Are there endgame traits at work in Long Beach that prefigure the near-final immanent foregrounding of this trope?

4.2  4.2.1 Cannaregio The Cannaregio project was undertaken as a contribution to a design seminar organised by the city of Venice and the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia.6 Seminar participants – Eisenman, John Hejduk, Bernard Hoesli, Raphael Moneo, and Oswald Mathias Ungers – were invited to explore urban approaches to historic city centres, taking different areas of Venice as sites of experimentation. Eisenman theorised a topological approach as distinguished from other approaches that imagine the city as a physical context (historical approach), as grid, as an object. See Figure 4.1, a manuscript sheet from this project illuminating these ideas.

78  Part II

Figure 4.1  Approaches to urban planning developed during the Cannaregio Town Square project, 1978–1980. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Peter D. Eisenman, Architect. Notes and sketches about urban planning for International Seminary of Design in the Area of Cannaregio-West, Venice, Italy 1978–1980, black and pink ink on vellum paper, 42 × 29.6, DR1991:0017:063)

Ground 79 The seminar invitation came at the end of the more than a decade-long House I (1967) to House 11a (1978) series. In Diagram Diaries, a retrospective survey of the first 30 years of his practice, Eisenman suggests four devices are associated with the Cannaregio project: gridding, nesting, scaling, and superposition.7 Certain of these find further use in other projects. In Cannaregio, the grid’s supposed autonomy and neutrality are expunged by Eisenman’s turn to the burdened grid of Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital project proposed for an adjacent site, extending it across the study site. Process drawings investigate topological twists to accommodate existing conditions, an approach abandoned in the developed scheme and perhaps an early sign of what is let go from previous concerns. Analysis of project documents reveals that ground is used in at least three distinct ways in Cannaregio. It demarcates, first, an architectural strategy of excavation. Eisenman introduces a channel along an alignment between two bridges bounding the site. Section drawings reveal the use along this topological axis of symmetry to mark a cut or fold in the ground plane. A second translation is in the golden section, deployed in study phases as a mapping strategy for migrating Le Corbusier’s design for the unbuilt Venice Hospital onto the project site in a modified manner.8 The Venice Hospital was proposed for an area abutting the Cannaregio project site and has a formal and diagrammatic function at all phases of Cannaregio’s development. Within the voids that mark intersection points of the golden section grid, Eisenman then superpositions variously scaled and overlapping versions of House 11a as a literal scaling operation. Third, ground plane diagrams are a primary rendering strategy for the presentation model and drawings. Other than the various versions of House 11a which are pink, the entire final site plan is rendered gold. The ambition of Eisenman is to contest with architectural means what he characterises as static polarities in western metaphysics, in this case figure/ground dichotomies. K. Michael Hays provides a helpfully succinct description of Eisenman’s ambitions for disciplinary self-reflection which supports this interpretation. Eisenman’s efforts in Cannaregio and other project, writes Hays, produce direct criticisms of underlying presumptions, ‘presumptions about the determinant structure of the site, about architecture’s mimetic and representational functions, and about the ideological innocence of form.’9 In an interview published in 1986, Eisenman claims that Cannaregio signalled a shift in his work in several regards. Two shifts at least are evident. The first concerns scale. With Cannaregio, Eisenman began to work on large-scale projects and he intentionally deploys the device of scaling among others as a means to destabilise what he claims are traces of architecture’s metaphysics as suggested above. For Eisenman, the latter is found in values of presence, hierarchy, and origins. In this logic, scaling up and down and the operation of folding into itself of House 11a becomes a means for questioning these values. It also leads, according to Eisenman, to opening up architecture to other possibilities.

80  Part II A second shift relates to the site and is expressed in ground manipulations including fictive archaeologies, that is, histories real but absent or immanent and thus potential. Eisenman notes that Cannaregio was his ‘first real site plan.’10 This emergent awareness of, and concern with, site and traces real and fictional – absent from the Houses series which were conceived as groundless up to the late House X – becomes perhaps the signal characteristic of the decade’s long investigation. The impact of this shift is clear in subsequent projects and in Romeo and Juliet in particular. 4.2.2  Romeo and Juliet Eisenman’s submission to the 1985 Venice Biennale is another of the so-called excavation archaeological projects as Greg Lynn among others characterised them.11 Following the 1985 display of drawings and models for the project known and published as Romeo and Juliet, Moving Arrows, Eros and Other Errors, Eisenman reworked the project in a boxed series of acetate plates published by the Architectural Association with an accompanying text in which he claims a wide ambition for the project and by extension the field. To give a sense and a clue to Eisenman’s theoretical interests at the time, here he is on Romeo and Juliet: ‘Here architecture does not close or unify, but rather opens and disperses, fragments and destabilises, not only as a condition of its own being but as an exploration of its resonance with the always changing conception of nature and human endeavour.’12 See Figure 4.2. This continues the alchemical themes of ground’s transmutability announced in Cannaregio. In the Architecture Association boxed set Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors, and to stay with gold as one clue to what is at stake, gold is used in four plates: Plate 30: as the river scaled up in an axonometric view; Plate 23: to demarcate the full-length S of the river at the scale of the site in part axonometric; Plate 21: as a partial plan of the river with the cardo-decumanus superposed and overscaled; and Plate 11: as the river in small scale with grid and walls and other elements in green and red. The gold used in the site model for Cannaregio is a single material providing monolithic legibility. However, it is monolithic without depth and thus renders fluid figure/surface or figure/ground readings. This is countered by the thin, insubstantial acetate layers of the box version of Moving Arrows while contrasted with the palpable substance of the presentation model. Here there are only layers and a single stable ground is never reached. From these uses in the boxed set publication, three architectural devices can be aligned with Eisenman’s ground preoccupations. As noted, the first of these is that of superposition. Romeo and Juliet provides a particularly dense demonstration of superpositioning at work and the publication a literal display of its potential. The operation of superpositioning is clearly a major discovery by Eisenman in this period as evidenced by the design

Ground 81

Figure 4.2  Destabilisations in Romeo and Juliet. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman/Robertson Architects. Axonometric for Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors 1985, reprographic copies with coloured adhesive, acrylic sheets, paper sheet 92 × 61 × 2 cm, DR1994:0148:249)

82  Part II development sketches now held by the Canadian Centre for Architecture (Figure 4.3). A second device claimed to be broadly working the conceptional ground of architecture is that of scaling. According to Eisenman, this device is characterised by three aspects: discontinuity, recursivity, and self-similarity.13 Eisenman claims that scaling is a process different from traditional processes relying on or imbedding principles of presence and origin: he names these three aspects ‘destabilising agents.’14 Each of these agents targets conditions of an aesthetic of presence and origin and thus confirms the ongoing

Figure 4.3  Diagrams of scaling and superpositioning in Romeo and Juliet. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman/ Robertson Architects. Site plans for Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors 1985, reprographic copies with ink, acrylic sheets, paper sheet, panel: 61 × 61 × 2)

Ground 83 line of an investigation begun in Cannaregio: discontinuity ‘confronts the metaphysics of presence’; recursivity ‘confronts origin’; and self-similarity confronts ‘representation and the [ideal of the] aesthetic object.’15 Different from Cannaregio, however, the impact of scaling emerges across the site itself as opposed to in discrete structures on the site, thus extending the critical operation to the entire built realm, fictional, real, and virtual. Scaling is one of several strategies tested in Romeo and Juliet as a means of introducing the idea of discontinuity into the city and architecture more specifically. In this, it continues the alchemical operations of Giordano Bruno recalled above. Different from superimposition and transference understood as a one over the other, a transference which preserves properties, superposed figures see their properties transformed, thus critically working on the ideal of a single origin.16 A third device is that of registration and for this there are three registration references: the cardo and decumanus of Verona, the old Roman Grid, and the Adige River. Colour is used in Moving Arrows to mark these three entities or conditions.17 Hays’s interpretation of the consequence of the various registrations leads him to the idea of phase shifts, perhaps the single most distinctive move in Romeo and Juliet with complex two dimensionality supplanting the volumetric obsessions of the Houses.18 The disruptions to the previously stable golden age – whether classic, modern, and even certain versions of postmodern - are shaken and a rhetoric of absence, of ends, of the end of the end comes to occupy a place in Eisenman’s writing and architectural concerns. Certain aspects of this shift are discussed above in the opening chapter, Endless Possibilities. An interview contemporaneous with the development and publication of Romeo and Juliet returns us to the transformative role of these questions in his practice, a sub focus of this chapter as announced in the introduction. Eisenman emphasises Romeo and Juliet’s shift-making role: ‘Romeo and Juliet marks a breaking point again like Cannaregio marked a breaking point. I think Romeo and Juliet is a break project.’19 To reinforce this, consider the spatial and visual outcome of intertwining grids and figures which lead to unreadability as a sign of the swerve underway in his practice. This requires a suspension of all the metaphorical tags that distract from what’s really going on architecturally in Romeo and Juliet. If we focus on the ground and the blurring of properties, we see from one perspective that it is a matter primarily of surfaces and a certain modernist trajectory of work on the surface. As Yve-Alain Bois says succinctly: ‘despite all the historico-geological mythology,’ the Eisenman projects which are aligned with the city of artificial excavation should be seen for what they are, ‘a surface strategy in which grids are a means of producing events.’20 If Bois provides helpful and synthetic observations, I think there is more going on architecturally if we take account of layers that are not strictly

84  Part II orthogonal grids. And we can use that quality of transmutability to highlight or distinguish such figures. For while there are grids at work, it seems that even more than those moiré effects which Bois emphasises, it is the idea and the device of the ambiguous figure – partial or otherwise – that is of particular interest here, not only in relation to what it adds about the impact of ground manipulations, but importantly in terms of Eisenman’s future preoccupations, some of which are considered in the following chapters on event and figure. This interpretation of what might be called a deliberate unreadability, perhaps reaching a crescendo in the University Art Museum as suggested in the next section, could be countered by another, that of a non-amorphous structure in the overall site field. This notion of a non-amorphous structure, of a structural order that belies a reading of composition’s absence, is consistent with Eisenman’s rhetoric of an other order that is non-hierarchical and non-anthropomorphic and it can be used to suggest the issues at stake. Richard Serra proposes the notion of non-amorphous field structure when describing the ‘absolutely controlled’ paint handling of Pollock in an interview with Eisenman right in the middle of this period. The interview is dotted with references to the meta text descriptions Eisenman uses in project texts and essays of the time including cuts and contextualism relevant to Romeo and Juliet and the project for Long Beach. 21 4.2.3  University Art Museum If Cannaregio sets up the ambition of disturbing the ground’s supposed stability, including by means of the use of the trope of gold as an allegory for experimenting on architecture’s mutability, and Romeo and Juliet embraces the site as fiction and deploys ground manipulations and scaling to signal its most emphatic state, the project for the University Art Museum in Long Beach pushes these and other operations to an extreme. In 1985, Eisenman received from the California State University at Long Beach the commission to design a 6,300-square metre (67,500-square foot) art museum to be located within an existing 9.3-hectare (23-acre) arboretum adjacent to the main campus entrance. Eisenman was occupied with various phases of the project over the course of 1986. 22 Let us start with the site plan. If Cannaregio was Eisenman’s ‘first real site plan,’23 then it may be productive to compare the site plan strategies of Long Beach to Cannaregio as a start to taking the measure of excavation and its different uses. In Long Beach, following a strategy explored for the first time in Venice, Eisenman begins with duplication and appropriation of fictional histories and the superposition of features real and allegorical onto a site. These histories concern land division, previous uses, and urban plans related to the specific Long Beach site. As Bédard and Balfour document comprehensively nearly a decade after that first site plan in Cannaregio, Eisenman’s form generation procedures are fully in motion.24 See the site plan in Figure 4.4.

Ground 85

Figure 4.4  Topographic survey for University Art Museum. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman/Robertson Architects., Long Beach, California 1986-1988, 28 × 22 cm, DR1987:0859:277)

86  Part II Used with no apparent order in early design development phases, figural decisions designate river bed shapes in the final presentation materials for Long Beach. Here the ground is manipulated to mark a former river bed (extruded into or as part of the museum building and site complex) and irrigation fields in a transfigured and re-scaled Jeffersonian grid. A first analysis of ground then is that it marks, as in Romeo and Juliet, non-architectural figures. In Long Beach, a topological axis of symmetry traced as a gully or fault in the ground plane is the clearest manifestation. It is a line that connects nothing, however, inscribed in an operation more akin to grafting or binding explored in other projects of the mid 1980s. The grid has been now fully abandoned and there is less of a reliance on scaling despite what Eisenman claims in Diagram Diaries. Returning to those alchemical properties of blurring and transformation announced in 1978, Eisenman characterises Long Beach as part of a larger post-structuralist project on the discipline which endeavours to disrupt architecture’s metaphysical realm or metaphysical rhythm with history now called on to occupy the place of fiction. Eisenman writes: ‘The University Art Museum of the California State University at Long Beach does not symbolize the sheltering of art. In its stead, the program is the invention of a fiction about the building’s own history.’25 As with other projects, there is a strategy of superpositioning that follows a story, in this instance a story about a 200-year condition that records a past Gold Rush (1849), a recent present (1949, the year of the university’s founding), and an imagined future (2049). These phases are crossed by a series of superimposed layers. The drawing of river + coastline + channel + faultline overlain on the topographic survey in Figure 4.4 begins to express these ideas. In a 1986 essay on the project, the 2049 state is labelled with four key layers: river + coastline + channel + fault line, all tokens of the disposition and generative strategies being tested. 26 In this regard, and to temporarily conclude the analysis of Long Beach, perhaps the substantive difference of Eisenman’s use of ground manipulations from earlier projects is that it occupies both palpable field conditions and virtual or imagined figural states in Long Beach. The irrigation fields to the top of presentation sheets function as a grid or field even if the orthogonal grid’s edges are emphatically shaped or given a figural outline. The architectural manipulation thus denies any simple grid reading as compared to the underlying regular even if complex grid in Cannaregio, for example. In a certain sense, it is a field that functions as an event as per Bois’ suggestion discussed below in Chapter 3. This latter concept has an ongoing and increasing role in the subsequent work of Eisenman. In an interview published in 1986 as noted earlier, Eisenman claims that projects from this period signal a shift in his work in several regards. In Chapter 3, such shifts are aligned with architectural time and ideas of history and memory. With Cannaregio, Eisenman began to work on

Ground 87 large-scale projects in which he intentionally deploys the device of scaling, among others, as a means to destabilise what he claims are architecture’s metaphysics of presence as suggested above. For Eisenman, the latter is found in values of presence, hierarchy, and origins. Scaling up and down and the operation of folding into itself become in this logic a means for questioning these values and thus, according to Eisenman, opening up architecture to other possibilities as revealed in Long Beach. A second shift relates to the site and is expressed in ground manipulations including fictive archaeologies, that is, histories real but absent or immanent and thus potential. Eisenman notes that Cannaregio was his ‘first real site plan.’27 This emergent awareness of and concern with the site and traces real and fictional – absent from the Houses series which were conceived as groundless up to the late House X – becomes perhaps the signal characteristic of the decade’s long investigation. The impact of this shift is clear in his project for Long Beach. A third device is that of scaling, according to Eisenman one itself characterised as previously noted by three aspects: discontinuity, recursivity, and self-similarity. 28 Eisenman claims that scaling is a technique different from traditional processes relying on, or imbedding principles of, presence and origin: and he names these aspects ‘destabilising agents.’29 Each of these agents targets according to Eisenman conditions of an aesthetic of presence and origin and thus confirms the ongoing line of an investigation begun in Cannaregio: discontinuity ‘confronts the metaphysics of presence’ exploited in Long Beach; recursivity ‘confronts origin’; and self-similarity confronts ‘representation and the [ideal of the] aesthetic object.’30 Different from Cannaregio, however, the impact of scaling at Long Beach emerges across the site itself as opposed to existing, or being found in discrete structures on the site. This difference thus extends the critical operation to the entire built realm, both real and virtual. Scaling is one of several strategies tested in Long Beach as a means to introduce the idea of discontinuity into the city and architecture more specifically. Different from superimposition and transference understood as a one over the other, a transference which preserves properties, superposed figures see their properties transformed thus critically working on the ideal of a single origin.31 A fourth device further evidencing a shift in formal emphasis is that of registration and on this topic multiple registration references are used in the University Art Museum project. Hays’ interpretation of the consequence of the various registrations leads him to the idea of phase shifts, 32 perhaps the single most distinctive move in period projects with complex two dimensionality supplanting the volumetric obsessions of the Houses series in the 1960s and 1970s. An interview contemporaneous with the development and publication of the University Art Museum returns us to the transformative role of this project in Eisenman’s practice. To reinforce this, consider the spatial and visual outcome of intertwining grids and figures which lead to unreadability as a

88  Part II sign of the swerve underway in his practice. This requires a suspension of all the metaphorical tags that distract from what is really going on architecturally in Long Beach. We see that it is a matter primarily of surfaces: more so in Long Beach, less in Cannaregio, which however does literally cut the surface. A certain modernist trajectory is also present and at work on the surface in architecture. This is to recall Bois’ succinct statement, made in the context of reflecting on the artificial excavation projects and an aspect of the Long Beach project in particular categorised as ‘a surface strategy in which grids are a means of producing events.’33 University Art Museum provides a logical complement or variation to the other case study projects. This is not to claim it is a conclusion. While University Art Museum does serve as a consistent and extreme instance of ground manipulations in figurative and actively diagrammatic ways, it is hard to ever claim an end in Eisenman. Rather, Long Beach provides another instance of Eisenman’s exploration of the formal and theoretical concerns he was investigating in Romeo and Juliet, Monte dei Paschi Bank, and which had been immanent if not yet foregrounded in Cannaregio (see Figure 4.5). Start with the site plan. If Cannaregio was Eisenman’s ‘first real site plan’ as discussed above, 34 then it may be productive to compare the site plan

Figure 4.5   Sketch plan for Monte Paschi Bank Competition. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects Renato Rizzi. Plan for Monte dei Paschi Bank International Competition for the Design of Piazza Matteotti, Sienna, Italy circa 1988, ink on yellow paper, 61 × 76 cm, DR1999:0040:006:028)

Ground 89 strategies of Long Beach to Cannaregio as a start to taking the measure of ground and its different uses. In Long Beach, following a strategy explored for the first time in Venice, Eisenman begins with duplication and appropriation of fictional histories and the superpositioning of features real and allegorical onto a site. These histories concern land division, previous uses, and urban plans related to the specific Long Beach site. As noted, Bédard and Balfour helpfully document systematically that nearly a decade after that first site plan in Cannaregio, Eisenman’s form generation procedures are fully in motion.35

4.3  In this analysis of three projects by Eisenman from the lens of ground manipulations, a number of interconnected themes have been identified and answers, however provisional, found to the opening questions. As regards the ground’s formal and spatial functions, I have shown that it functions as a metaphor given an architectural translation in the devices of scaling, registration, and superposition. This is especially evident in Romeo and Juliet. Ground manipulation through scaling serves as a generative tool, providing Eisenman an armature to register and control plan dispositions and form transformations in Cannaregio. Horizontal planes are used to signal multiple artificial field conditions, with overlays, marking a cut or an edge in that first site plan of Cannaregio, for example, where Eisenman is surprised to find a project axis that is not exactly a path but some form of cut or gully. This condition is further deployed in Verona and returns again in Long Beach although differently translated, the museum volume being rendered in tracings of the highly irregular line of a former river bed. Finally, and accompanying project-specific devices and strategies, the roughly decade-long period covered by these projects is marked by the disappearance of a golden time in which Eisenman’s practice was founded on other concepts and different architectural conditions. By focusing only on the strictly formal/spatial or architectonic aspects, it marks the end of the Houses series and all that was implied or left unsaid. Still not fully reconciled today nearly four decades later, it is thus patently the end of the object. As noted in the first two chapters, it is also the emphatic displacement of the subject, the end of space’s permutability, and a loss of faith in an otherwise stable x, y, and z coordinate system to create volumes different from a counter-composition mode. As regards the litany of architectural questions in evidence, recent commentators provide suggestions useful to a synthetic summary view. In an effort to understand what is at stake in Eisenman’s Wexner Center for the Visual Arts (Ohio State, 1980–1986), for example, Moneo introduces a distinction between an architectural phenomenon and a building’s impact. For Moneo, due in part to the dominance of partial grids and lattice structures at Ohio State, ‘architecture emerges as an architectural phenomenon

90  Part II without assuming the condition of a building.’36 This endless deferral to reaching ‘the condition of a building’ – whole, stable, with a sensible origin, remaining ever an architectural phenomenon – is perhaps an overarching ambition of Eisenman in the three projects considered. All three projects employ ground manipulations and other devices to install what Balfour, in a close reading of process sketches from Long Beach, calls a ‘significant disturbance,’37 echoing Eisenman’s ‘destabilising agents’ as discussed above. There is a strategy of superposition, for instance, which Balfour uses to differentiate a simple layering of stable and hierarchical relationships, one which favours a condition in which no one layer or figure dominates, each reinforcing a shared instability. Registration is then used to endlessly control and revise the project into a state of ‘significant disturbance.’ This idea of significant disturbance is one way to organise potential impacts on architectural knowledge for Eisenman. Such a state creates the conditions of possibility for the new, the unforeseen, and the potential to appear. In this, it returns us to that allegory of gold’s fluidity, its capacity to be both solid and liquid, that opened the analysis. Bois provides a complimentary interpretation which is useful in relation to the final opening question, that of Long Beach’s end game traits. In the course of a discussion about the difficulty in conceptualising events in Eisenman’s archaeological projects, Bois notes: ‘Perhaps it has to do with our inveterate difficulty in perceiving architectural events, while a long practice of cities leaves us better aware of the sudden, silent jolt of a ghost.’38 This distinction of the city over event provides another clue to the shift in focus as can be seen in Eisenman’s sudden sensitivity to any site’s traces – real and fictional, past and present – revealing complexities previously unavailable to him and yet by 1986-87 with Long Beach now a constant in this thinking and practice and discussed at length in Chapter 3. As a provisional summary of the role and function of ground in these three Eisenman projects, Table 4.1 suggests major strategies and traits and proposes relevant ‘significant disturbances’ echoing Balfour and perhaps the silent jolt of Bois. For Long Beach, the discipline-level disturbance is perhaps located in the idea of figure; for Romeo and Juliet, phase shifts may be the most valuable single trait. For Cannaregio, the beginning of a fascination with the ground, the disturbance is surely manifest in the device of unstable ground planes. Two further lines of research should be highlighted if only to show the particularly deep potential among the many questions that could be considered from this period in Eisenman’s work. The first is the question of the architectural figure. The idea of the figure and those of the partial figure and the operation of partial figuration which appear later continue up to today to be present in Eisenman’s teaching and practice.39 This question is taken up in Chapter 6. While I have not found an extended explanation of the figure, some questions provide a first bracketing of how to approach

Ground 91 Table 4.1  Set out of architectural aspects examined in three projects by Peter Eisenman: Cannaregio Town Square (Venice, 1978), Romeo and Juliet (Verona, 1985), University Art Museum (Long Beach, 1986)

Conceptual Strategies

Cannaregio Town Square Scaling X

Alchemical properties

X

Formal-Spatial Devices

Geometry

Site Unstable ground

X

Fiction Phase shifts

Figure Partial figuration

X

X

X

X

X

Registration Superposition

University Art Museum

X

Memory

Significant disturbance

Romeo and Juliet

X

it. Ground travels from background to figure to ambiguous figure. Is this one approach to understanding the figure in Eisenman? Is the partial figure another term that breaks from the dialectic figure/ground, or figure/figure? Which kinds of manipulation are required to change, for example, the grid from matrix to figure? Greg Lynn provides a taxonomy of variations on this problem which should be considered in the future investigation, the architectural figure in Eisenman displayed in figure/ground couples, figure/ figure relations, residual figures, and figural intervals.40 To these, alluded to in his recent seminars and studios at the Yale School of Architecture, can be added the partial figure and, from Eisenman’s City of Culture of Galicia, a strategy of partial figuration. A second line of research anticipated here concerns the el and its relation to an ongoing effort to write the history of twentieth-century architectural space concepts. The el seems to appear fully in Eisenman’s practice in Cannaregio. Or perhaps, by accepting as accurate the respective project histories, the el is already in a fully considered state as used in House X from 1975, appears in a developed way at the same time as Cannaregio in House 11a, and more obsessively in House El Even Odd and the Guardiola House (1988) at the other end of the period. Like many elements and operations, there is overlap and repetition of forms and strategies. Several questions might accompany the investigation into the el. What role does it have in the histories of space concepts in the twentieth century? Is it more on the side of modernist or neo-plasticist sensibilities, and if so, which are the characteristics or qualities that differentiate it? Another related aspect of this line of research is that of projection. In House El Even Odd, for

92  Part II example, architectural projection is part of the investigation if not the main research protagonist in the project. The beautiful and rich sets of architectural drawings – not diagrams despite the book title – that he publishes in Diagram Diaries41 have yet to be fully interrogated in relation, for instance, to histories of architectural projection or in terms of the architectural issues rendered visible. Such investigations are to be saved for a subsequent study.

Notes 1 Peter Eisenman, Diagram Diaries (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), 173. 2 Raphael Moneo, Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight. Contemporary Architects, trans. Gina Cariño (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2004), 193. 3 Eisenman, Diagram Diaries, 182. 4 Peter Eisenman, “Tre testi per Venezia/Three Texts for Venice,” Domus 611 (November 1980). 5 Eisenman, “Three Texts for Venice,” 9. 6 Jean-François Bédard, “Project History,” in Cities of Artificial Excavation. The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988, ed. Jean-François Bédard (Montréal: Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture; New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1994): 54. 7 Eisenman, Diagram Diaries, 168-169. 8 See, for example, diagonal axis studies DR1991:0017:065, Peter Eisenman Fonds, Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal. 9 See K. Michael Hays, “From Structure to Site to Text. Eisenman’s Trajectory,” in Thinking the Present. Recent American Architecture, eds. K Michael Hays and Carol Burns (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1990), 67. 10 Peter Eisenman, “Interview with Lynne Breslin,” Space Design 258 (March 1986): 63. 11 Greg Lynn, “Architecture versus Sculpture,” in Peter Eisenman. Barfuss auf weiss glühenden mauern/Peter Eisenman. Barefoot on White-Hot Walls, ed. Peter Noever (Wien/Vienna: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2004), 163. 12 Peter Eisenman, Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: An Architecture of Absence (London: Architectural Association, 1986), plate 9. 13 Eisenman, Moving Arrows, pl. 5. 14 Eisenman, Moving Arrows, pl. 4. 15 Eisenman, Moving Arrows, pl. 4. 16 This is discussed in part by Eisenman in his “Interview with Lynn Breslin,” 65. 17 Eisenman, Moving Arrows, pl. 13. 18 K. Michael Hays, Architecture’s Desire. Reading the Late Avant-Garde (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2010), 66. 19 Eisenman, “Interview with Lynne Breslin,” 64. 20 Yve-Alain Bois, “Surfaces,” in Cities of Artificial Excavation. The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988, ed. Jean-François Bédard (Montréal: Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture; New York: Rizzoli International Publications): 38-45, 42. 21 Richard Serra and Peter Eisenman, “Interview,” Skyline 2 (April 1983): 16. 22 Cities of Artificial Excavation. The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988, ed. Jean-François Bédard (Montréal: Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture; New York: Rizzoli International Publications): 134–136. See also Alan Balfour, “Documents of a Creative Process,” in Cities of Artificial Excavation, esp. 169.

Ground 93 23 Eisenman, “Interview with Lynne Breslin,” 63. 24 Balfour, “Documents of a Creative Process,” 171. 25 Peter Eisenman, “University Campus, Long Beach California Museum. The Museum Rediscovered,” Lotus International 50 (1986): 129. 26 Eisenman, “University Campus,” 134. 27 Eisenman, “Interview with Lynne Breslin,” 63. 28 Peter Eisenman, Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: An Architecture of Absence (London: Architectural Association, 1986), plate 5. 29 Eisenman, Moving Arrows, plate 4. 30 Eisenman, Moving Arrows, plate 4. 31 Scaling as transferal is discussed in part by Eisenman in his “The City as Memory and Immanence,” in Zone 1, eds. Jonathan Crary, Michel Feher, Hal Foster and Sanford Kwinter (New York: Urzone Inc., 1986), 441. 32 K. Michael Hays, Architecture’s Desire. Reading the Late Avant-Garde (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2010), 66. 33 Yve-Alain Bois, “Surfaces,” in Cities of Artificial Excavation. The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988, ed. Jean-François Bédard (Montréal: Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture; New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1994), 42. 34 Eisenman, “Inteview with Breslin,” 63. 35 Balfour, “Documents,” 171. 36 Rafael Moneo, “Unexpected Coincidences,” El Croquis 41 (October–December 1989): 57. 37 Alan Balfour, “Documents of a Creative Process, in Cities of Artificial Excavation. The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988, ed. Jean-François Bédard (Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal; New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2010): 176. 38 Bois, “Surfaces,” 44. 39 On the latter, see, for example, the 2012 advanced studio on the partial figure given at Yale: Peter Eisenman, Venice Project III: Figure/Disfigure, Unit 1104a, unpublished studio outline (New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2012). 40 Lynn, “Architecture versus Sculpture,” 162–165. 41 Eisenman, Diagram Diaries, 110–111. Explanatory labels are attached to the reproduction of the drawings in Pier Vittorio Aureli, Marco Biraghi, and Franco Purini, eds, Peter Eisenman: Tutte le opere (Milano: Mondadori Electa, 2007), 103.

Bibliography Aureli, Pier Vittoria, Biraghi Marco and Purini Franco, eds. Peter Eisenman: Tutte le opere. Milano: Mondadori Electa, 2007. Balfour, Alan. “Documents of a Creative Process.” In Cities of Artificial Excavation. The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988, edited by Jean-François Bédard, 169–185. Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal; New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2010. Bédard, Jean-François, ed. Cities of Artificial Excavation. The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988. Montréal: Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture; New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1994. Bédard, Jean-François. “Project History.” In Cities of Artificial Excavation. The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988, edited by Jean-François Bédard, 54–62. Montréal: Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture; New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1994.

94  Part II Bois, Yves-Alain. “Surfaces.” In Cities of Artificial Excavation. The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988, edited by Jean-François Bédard, 38–45. Montréal: Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture; New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1994. Eisenman, Peter. “Interview With Lynne Breslin.” Space Design 258 (March): 63–65. Eisenman, Peter. “The City as Memory and Immanence.” In Zone 1, edited by Jonathan Crary, Michel Feher, Hal Foster and Sanford Kwinter, 440–4341. New York: Urzone Inc, 1986. Eisenman, Peter. “Tre testi per Venezia/Three Texts for Venice.” Domus 611 (November 1980): 9–11. Eisenman, Peter. “University Campus, Long Beach California Museum. The Museum Rediscovered.” Lotus International 50 (1986): 128–135. Eisenman, Peter. Diagram Diaries. London: Thames and Hudson, 1999. Eisenman, Peter. Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: An Architecture of Absence. London: Architectural Association, 1986. Hays, K Michael. “From Structure to Site to Text. Eisenman’s Trajectory.” In Thinking the Present. Recent American Architecture, edited by K Michael Hays and Carol Burns, 61–71. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1990. Hays, K Michael. Architecture’s Desire. Reading the Late Avant-Garde. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2010. Lynn, Greg. 2004. “Architecture Versus Sculpture.” In Peter Eisenman. Barfuss auf weiss glühenden mauern/Peter Eisenman. Barefoot on White-Hot Walls, edited by Peter Noever, 160–167. Wien/Vienna: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2004. Moneo, Raphael. “Unexpected Coincidences.” El Croquis 41(October–December 1989): 52–61. Moneo, Raphael. Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight. Contemporary Architects. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2004. Serra, Richard and Peter Eisenman. “Interview.” Skyline 2 (April 1983): 14–17.

5

Figures

5.1 There is a cluster of projects by Peter Eisenman that appeared in the late 1980s and early 1990s and that distinguish themselves from what one longtime observer of the architect characterised as a ‘mannerist cult of textual stratification veined by esoteric shadows.’1 But that’s certainly only part of the story. Another clue as to what was going on at the time can be found in Lynne Breslin’s 1986 interview with Eisenman. In the interview, Eisenman suggests a specific preoccupation that may help to start to approach the nature of his thinking and the design techniques that accompanied certain of the projects and writings in these same years. The immediate concern is with figures and with modes of figuration. In the course of the interview, and in response to Breslin asking about significant changes since winning the competition for, and moving into the design development phase of, the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts and Fine Arts Library – by 1986 the 1983 competition winning project was in construction – Eisenman pauses. Eventually, he responds, announcing that what’s occupying him at the moment, and different from the questions at play around and in Wexner, is ‘the problem of figuration.’2 Eisenman specifically announces that he is no longer interested in or able to ‘do Ohio State again’3: no longer after Wexner and after the project for Romeo and Juliet. So what happened in Wexner and then in Romeo and Juliet? Or to formulate the question differently: what is contained in the problem of figuration and what was compelling about it at that moment? Which aspects of architectural culture are contaminated by this issue of figure and techniques of figuration? How might one understand this question of the figure in Eisenman’s acts of architecture in those years? Twenty years later, and to get a sense of the enduring presence of the figure, Eisenman returns to the topic. Well after Breslin, and again in an interview, Eisenman observes: ‘… I believe there’s a need [in architecture] to return to figuration, not icon but figuration. But not full-blown figuration but partial figures. Figures that can be understood as aspects of ground DOI: 10.4324/9780429059964-8

96  Part II or aspects of other figures but that do not in fact lead to necessary whole objects.’4 Eisenman thus emphatically locates his thinking about the figure and figuration in the larger period work that circles around resistance strategies, and some discussed in Chapter 1. To take just one example, such strategies include those tied to what Eisenman calls a part-whole logic. To take another years-later example, more clearly enunciated in subsequent cases, one can also turn to Eisenman’s claims of work on figure-figure urbanism in the November 2012 symposium held at the Princeton School of Architecture. With the now resonant symposium title ‘Eisenman 80: Architecture and Resistance,’5 Eisenman discusses a figure-figure urban ambition in relation to the City of Culture of Galicia. In that project, to approach an understanding of his ongoing engagement with the task of problematising figure. Eisenman’s characterisation is framed as part of the larger project to disrupt conventions, including axes of symmetry, part to whole relations, and dynamic balance.6 A consequence is that in the City of Culture, for example, Eisenman claims that ‘ground becomes figure.’ 7 Alongside the direct work on architectural conditions through the figure, there is associated work on the influence of memory. Never fully absent from investigations in the two decades under exploration, the effort to deploy memory as an architectural trope in this phase finds various manifestations, some discussed in Chapter 3. This includes grafting of formal/ spatial memories and a scaling strategy in the Tokyo Opera House. As discussed below, Eisenman asserts that Tokyo Opera House moves beyond, or at least in a different direction from, Romeo and Juliet. The Tokyo Opera House, writes Eisenman, ‘has more figuration it.’8 This suggests that at that moment, Tokyo examines different questions and aspects associated with figure and figuration as compared to Romeo and Juliet and in comparison to other projects such as Biocenter. Another manifestation of what figuration is about can be found in his reference to a kind of ‘conceptual memory’ as Eisenman claims in his description of the design for the Emory Center for the Arts: ‘Our work imposes a conceptual memory on the volumetric massing of an object, and in doing so attempts to subvert icons of presence, the building mass itself, with a striated network of what could be described as lines of memory.’ 9 One key to this is the ambition to subvert presence. Stated differently, the ambition is to get specifically to the conceptual grounds of the discipline and in so doing disrupt a nostalgia for presence. This allows us to locate Emory, and more explicitly in what follows Banyoles and Tours, in this investigation of the meaning of Eisenman’s work on figure. This act of imposition of qualities such as conceptual memory from outside other categories starts to give a sense of the scope bound to considerations of figure and figuration. In what follows, I consider writings and projects in the years under review from the lens of the figure in various guises. These include but are

Figures 97 not limited to figure/ground polarities, figure-figure urbanism, the partial figure, and figuration as distinct from composition. A consideration of the interaction of such ideas also leads to a discussion of blurring. Before turning to the projects, and to further imagine the setting, let’s briefly return to considerations around memory, in an initial instance turning back to Berlin. By the late 1980s, the evidence had started to pile up and be reflected on. And even the short distance of a few years allowed some considered interpretations – more about, some would say, collision than contextualism – bringing different lines of Eisenman’s contemplations together in one fell swoop of erudition. While chronologically overlapping with considerations related to the artificial excavation projects discussed in Chapter 4, a focus on the figure thematically allows us to return to Berlin and to the heated discussions and proposals gathered around the Internationale Bauausstellung – the international building exhibition or IBA. This also provides a bridge to Luigi Canina’s 1850 plan for Rome and to Sigmund Freud.10 The point of time and occasion is Colin Rowe’s 1987 Walter Gropius Lecture, delivered at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in December of that year. I return to Rowe’s discussion of Cannaregio, but here focus immediately on Rowe’s qualified reference to Eisenman/Robertson’s IBA originated Kochstrasse and Friedrichstrasse Housing Project. This comes after a discussion of what Rowe names the ‘extensive manipulations’ of the 1960s and 1970s apartment plan design contrasted with what he characterises as the competent work of the early twentieth century. However, the main point for our purposes is the discussion of city-idea manifestations. Rowe starts: ‘I suspect my friend Peter of being a devotee of Canina’s plan for Rome which was also admired by Sigmund Freud… the influence of the plan is evident: and where Freud allows himself to imagine that Rome represents an accumulation of psychic debris and that all buildings which have existing on the site may also be conceived of as simultaneously present. An interesting Freudian intuition and fairly inevitable that it should be grabbed, by Peter, as “the excavated city.”’11 This is to suggest a confounding of city ideas, the model of Freud’s Rome through Rowe, and the character of an architecture of excavation revealing by giving presence to traces that haunt or potentially render, without end, a plan or section idea. Another thematic line that surrounds considerations of the figure in Eisenman is that teased out around the term ornament. Henry Cobb and in different contexts Philip Johnson and Antoine Picon provide different ways to think about Eisenman’s work – at least certain projects including those discussed in this chapter – in relation to ornament and to ornamentation more broadly as another translation of what he’s thinking about when writing or speaking about the figure. In light of ornamentation’s virtual prohibition since Adolph Loos, Cobb is amazed to find evidence in the Aronoff Center for Design and Art of a new ‘system of ornament.’12 Cobb arrives at this surprising suggestion following a site visit to the nearly complete

98  Part II building. The reference to the system by Cobb is not random and should be further unpacked. Inversely, Johnson touches on key conditions and outcomes in an interview that accompanied the publication of the Biocenter. The figure in this project is a process, and more specifically the geometry of DNA processes. Johnson aligns the spatial effects with Russian Constructivism – this in the year of the Museum of Modern Art show on deconstructive architecture – with the torn programmatic elements held together by a spine or ‘backbone.’13 In circling around the figure in Eisenman’s work at that moment, Johnson alludes to a condition which has yet to be discussed overtly. It is the condition or question of the elevation, and specifically Eisenman’s apparent disinterest in the elevation in those years.14 What is the implication of this disinterest in the elevation and a stance in favour of allowing ‘strange intersections that he never would have allowed before.’15 These strange intersections imply, perhaps, a letting go or possibly the introduction of shapes yielded out of other moves resulting from not fully controlled manipulations. Such moves include engaging scaling and the multivalence of place through plane and surface. What if architecture is not bound to place, to time, or to set scale? Which conditions, otherwise immanent, might be released? These architectural conditions are not necessarily new but are potentially different and distinguished by and with the capacity to destabilise as premised in the early 1980s in ‘The End of the Classical’ discussed in the opening chapter. Thus in the mid 1980s, Eisenman certainly poses the question of figuration. Though it comes up elsewhere, it is perhaps not so blatantly framed as in the essay ‘Architecture and the Problem of the Rhetorical Figure.’16 I return to this text below. Franco Purini provides an additional critical take and suggestions on this period and how we might frame it. Purini, writing in the late 1990s, variously characterises the work gathered in Blurred Zones as displaying a ‘neobaroque conception of space,’ or as revealing or putting on display a ‘mannerist cult of textual stratification, veined by esoteric shadows’ to call up the source of an opening to this chapter.17 On a wider track, he also sees here a multivalency running from micro to macro scales. These three aspects – a space conception generated out of or remaining after the strategic intersection, textual stratification, and multivalency – return to characterise many of the projects running through the office. A different clue or illustration of how Eisenman was thinking in relation to the figure can equally be found in his description of the Monte dei Paschi Bank Competition. He writes: ‘Siena, like every town, is made up of a series of latent or repressed figures …’18 Like every town, the city – real or virtual – by this point has become one protagonist that joins in from the beginning of every project. The description of Monte dei Paschi continues, revealing other aspects associated with the architect’s work on figuration: ‘A second

Figures 99 idea [in our competition response] was that figures that exist as traces of an archaeology of the past and future could be found.’19 In this case, the term figure is used to call out latent or to-be-imagined but repressed shapes, whether of space or built form. Shapes that have the capacity if imagined from a certain point of view to be neither singular objects nor contain natural presence, nor part of a conventional type. From this point of view, Eisenman continues a practice of resistance, promulgating an other architecture, an other process, characterised in part by a capacity to reveal, as Eisenman describes it, ‘latent characteristics of the area.’20 In the project description for Sienna, Eisenman also includes a reference to weak form. An important notion at the time and part of a set of notions that come into play as the office endeavours to articulate the qualities, effects, and consequent design techniques used to get there. In this setting, the term weak form is used to qualify non unitary urbanism in contrast to a unitary and strong urban-scale form with clear, unambiguous contours, edges, and profiles that can be considered another case of blurring rendered manifest. The concept of ‘the edge as a multivalent weak figure’ is, for example, a specific way for Eisenman to experiment with shapes found or invented through superpositioning. 21 To follow for a moment this line of inquiry into the weak form, let’s consider a period lecture by Eisenman. Given at the Architecture Association in April 1989, Eisenman addresses here sometimes head-on, sometimes obliquely, a set of ideas around the weak form, repressed figures, and multivalent weak figure. The title of the lecture as published is ‘Architecture and the Problem of the Weak Image.’22 He gets to the point early in discussing Wexner, claiming that in considering the relationship of building to external platforms he finds from a certain lens that what is important is that ‘… there is never an edge, no frame …’23 This is one of the unanticipated consequences that surprises Eisenman. Eisenman publishes a text the same year which further elaborates on an idea of a weak image that can provide further context to this discussion. With the emphatically ambiguous title ‘En Terror Firma: In Trails of Grotextes,’ Eisenman uses the notion of an architecture on the side of the weak image to describe an ambition of displacement. This is an ambition to displace how architecture has previously conceptualised itself in order to open itself to new conditions, and specifically for Eisenman in this essay, to consider a shift from nature to knowledge. If previously the problem of architecture was to symbolise man’s overcoming of nature, how might architecture today symbolise man’s capacity to overcome knowledge. 24 The project likely in the background, though not called out specifically here, is Carnegie Mellon Research Institute (1988–1989). Eisenman relates this story elsewhere in relation to the brief Eisenman was given by the university president to ‘develop a design addressing the

100  Part II “knowledge revolution” … to describe [in other words] man’s ability to reconceptualise architecture and the way in which we occupy space.’25

5.2 To expand on the above, from the frame of figure and figuration, and associated ideas across a series of projects, we ask about the basis of forms in three projects. 5.2.1  Tokyo Opera House The competition for the Tokyo Opera House follows on from Romeo and Juliet. The brief included three theatres: a black-box theatre, a 1000-seat performance space, an 1800-seat opera house, and ancillary spaces including rehearsal spaces, office space, and underground parking. 26 In notes attached to sketches for the Tokyo Opera House held in the Eisenman archives at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Eisenman describes an idea he circles around at the time: ‘Human scale is no longer the basis of the form but rather [the basis of architectural form is] the analogous relationships that can be seen from the superposition of forms.’27 See Figure 5.1. Drawings and models prepared for the Tokyo Opera House competition entry do not appear in either Tracing Eisenman or Peter Eisenman

Figure 5.1   Manuscript sheet with notes on Tokyo Opera House Competition. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman/ Robertson Architects. Sketch and notes for Tokyo Opera House Competition, Tokyo, Japan 1985, reprographic copy, 28 × 43.2 cm, DR1999:0200:003)

Figures 101 Tutte le opere. Both do include a reference to the project in the complete list of projects more or less up to the publication date (2006 and 2007, respectively). Sketches and images are published in the 1995 monograph Eisenman Architects: Selected and Current Works. 28 In this project, in fact and quite possibly in intent, Eisenman renders manifest a whole set of correspondences. Examining the drawings and models, the following can be highlighted: scaling, overlapping and rotating grid fields, and the graft. Some are trialled elsewhere, though perhaps not exactly in a recognisably similar manner or with similar intensity or a similar outcome. I’m thinking most overtly of Long Beach Museum (see his use of the figure of the oil rig), the New National Museum of Korea, and Romeo and Juliet (techniques of scaling and superpositioning). In the project for the Tokyo Opera House competition, Eisenman trials a different idea of figure and in turn a different idea of structure. There are certainly echoes of Berlin and Romeo and Juliet in Eisenman’s reference to scaling and superpositioning. Figure 5.2, a sketch of a final presentation perspective for Tokyo Opera House, echoes some of the temperament on display in Long Beach. Raphael Moneo perhaps provides a way to situate this work. Commenting on Eisenman’s use of Scamozzi and the idea of decomposition as rendered in the 1994 ‘Futility of Objects’ essay, Moneo writes, thinking of Scamozzi: ‘Neither axes, nor center, nor strict correspondence between interior and

Figure 5.2  Sketch for Tokyo Opera House Competition. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman/Robertson Architects. Perspective for Tokyo Opera House Competition, Tokyo, Japan 1985, reprographic copy with pencil, 61 × 92 cm, DR1999:0202.014)

102  Part II exterior gives a clue to the architecture’s hidden order. How nice that architecture can be itself without immediately revealing the architect’s intentions! And not because it lacks a structure, but because its formal content resists and escapes classification, categorization, standardization, or normalization.’ Moneo continues: ‘When we study this architecture, we have to recognize its uniqueness, its unrepeatability. Then we can affirm that indescribable architecture ignores norms, forgets precedent. Wherever these are dominant reigns memory, history.’29 While not talking about the Tokyo Opera House, Moneo makes these comments in the context of thinking about Romeo and Juliet, which in a direct way is a similar project conceptually. Memory, history: twins for Moneo that can and should be overcome. Or maybe they should simply be forgotten, left behind. In this manner, he inadvertently echoes the sentiments of Eisenman for Tokyo. In unpublished notes, Eisenman observes: ‘Our project is an attempt to make an analogy between our site as a new center for culture and the old center of culture in Tokyo which was always the Emperor’s realm. To do this it is necessary to make a series of analogous relationships between old and new which go all the way back to when the emperor’s realm was in Tokyo.’30 It can be claimed that in this way Eisenman permits one to situate the competition entry for the Tokyo Opera House as a further variation of the problem of figuration. And the concomitant effort to ‘bring figuration into my discourse’ suggests the shift at stake. A number of processes are evident in looking at the drawings, including that of scaling. The project suggests that by creating a series of analogous relationships to the courtyard in the Emperor’s realm in Kyoto, an analogical relationship is created between the proposed new centre of culture in Tokyo and the old. If we accept the generic definition in Moneo above, we can expand it in relation to Tokyo. Thus formulated, and turning the tables on Eisenman, one can ask after the not classical, the not modern sensibility on display in Tokyo and the questions posed. To further set out aspects of the Tokyo project and its contribution to work on figuration as a displacement of stable dualities, it may be useful to connect Tokyo with the project for the Biocenter happening in the same years. The Biocenter, Goethe University (Frankfurt, 1986) continues the ambition of dislodging architectural traditions. As Eisenman describes it, the project for the Biocenter ‘dislocates the tradition of architecture.’31 Accepting Eisenman is disposed to exploring new possibilities, which powers are in evidence in the Biocenter, even if not visible? As an approach to this question, here is Eisenman in conversation with Greg Lynn. Eisenman observes: ‘There was a little model here this morning of the Cannaregio Town Square project, for Venice. What we were doing with that project was all about composition, and I’m all about diagrams. So we were asking: “Can we turn composition into a diagram?” – and into the

Figures 103 third dimension? … Cannaregio was really one of the purest – I don’t know if you want to call it linguistic – but I’m not sure it wasn’t the beginning of the diagrammatic work.’ Eisenman continues: ‘I’ve been differentiating my work from Colin Rowe, and this is absolutely where it happens. He wasn’t interested in the diagram, he was into the parti – the parti was compositional. I was interested in diagram, which is something else, and the morphological as opposed to typological. Of course, Rem Koolhaas is interested in the typological diagram. I’m interested in the morphological diagram that generates form. And I think this is where Colin and I split.’32 This categorization by Eisenman can be used as a final characterisation of Tokyo Opera House, the purely diagrammatic basis of Tokyo standing it apart from Cannaregio and of Rowe in its embrace of the figuration problem. 5.2.2  Banyoles Olympic Hotel Let’s look at another project from this period, Banyoles Olympic Hotel. What does Banyoles reveal about Eisenman when referenced to figurefigure urbanism, and non-hierarchical strategies of figuration? How would a building operate such that it purposefully rebels against normative assumptions and traditional conditions, blurring building/landscape distinctions, for example? Standing in opposition to classical conventions of ordination and design, what Eisenman has called another architectural response may allow for, and in a manner to be determined, render or better engender intentionally the ‘random, chaotic, and disorganised.’33 This proposition can serve to start to characterise aspects of the unbuilt project for Banyoles. The question of legibility only becomes relevant secondarily. Banyoles does not conspire clear legibility nor to single meaning. In that sense, one can claim the project crosses over to the realm of what Kipnis calls out as qualifying things that can be situated on the side of deconstruction. 34 I return below to expand on this. Which figures are triggers for the formal-spatial episodes that is Banyoles? Though evident in a review of published drawings and models, such episodes include the notion of the rowers’ oars, a trigger sparked by the project brief of providing housing for Olympic athletes participating in the rowing events of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Following the project description touched on in Chapter 3, the basis of time past equals agricultural divisions; the time present references landform extended out from the built form, and form comes in part from the ‘trace of two motions in the arc of sweeps of an eight-oar shell.’35 In this light, Banyoles is on the side of a morphological diagram as distinct from a typological parti generating form. The art of figuration in this late 1980s project can be located in part in the translation of land divisions as a basis for built form. Section distributions follow a logic of displacement or perhaps a literal trope of ‘between’ in both plan and section rendering an

104  Part II

Figure 5.3   Site plan sketch of registrations for Banyoles Olympic Hotel. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Sketch for Banyoles Olympic Hotel, Banyoles, Spain 1989-1990, coloured ink on paper, 38.6 × 91.8 cm, DR1999:0045:002:029)

intentional blurring of what might be assumed to be stable interpretation. This can be construed as a literal application of one of many aspects of an architecture of displacement claimed by Eisenman in ‘En Terror Firma.’ The figure in the landform-building project of Banyoles finds one manifestation in the registration and imprinting of the various traces – land division, an extension of built form into the open space and back through the built form, and the trace of eight-oar sweeps. See Figure 5.3. Lines in Banyoles become the realm through which Eisenman deploys his exploration of figuration and the partial figure as holding place concepts for conditions that blur. This intent is explicit in the project description that claims the project achieves another state: a state or quality different from that aligned with a ‘single metaphysical enclosure’ and perhaps justified in seeing it as an elusive, yet-to-be reached condition. Not a cartesian line, rather it is a partial figure subjected to such forces that the resulting character can be described as what Eisenman calls ‘exponential torsions and phase shifts.’36 In this manner, Banyoles further extends the point made by Tokyo Opera House about blurring, and in a manner different from that deployed in the Center for the Arts (Emory University, 1991) to recall another project from these transformative years. Banyoles stages a different kind of partial figure: autonomous, never fully resolved as there is never an original stable whole to turn to. 5.2.3 Tours Regional Music Conservatory and Contemporary Arts Centre How should a contemporary cultural centre be given form? This is the question Eisenman suggests accompanied the project for the Regional Music Conservatory and Contemporary Arts Center proposed for Tours. Developed over 1993–1994 in collaboration with Jean Yves Barrier

Figures 105 Architect, this question of how the form is given applies as much to spaces in between built form as to interior spaces. Tours displays differently and with different motivations and histories, a kind of technique found in the Biocenter discussed above. On first blush, it has nothing to do with the perspectival recession that illustrates one aspect of the Biocenter: a voiding of any sense of volumetric presence internally. In this way, Tours shares qualities of the Wexner Center, Aronoff, and the New National Museum of Korea considered in Chapter 6. Antoine Picon provides a further way into thinking about Tours as rendering a singular figure that has qualities that can align with the ornamental. From a discussion of Preston Scott Cohen’s addition to the Tel Aviv Museum of Modern Art, 37 Picon provides a catalogue of uses of the term that provides a lens for thinking about Tours as a case of ornament that announces a different idea of figure. Does Tours get there? Does it affect or realise a displacement of ground or field, repelling an original whole in fact and in theory? Is it a building as carrier of ‘intrinsically dynamic force fields’38 to reference Picon? Is there a device at work in the project for Tours that functions as an ornament, in a manner similar to the Lightfall in Cohen’s building?39 In this case, by ornament, Picon is referring to something that is outside of regulating forces or other determining orders, converting the thing into ‘an object in its own right’40 as distinct to a supporting or supplemental part of the building. Picon goes on to provide a useful distinction, finding in Lightfall evidence of a ‘performance logic,’ the building seeking to fill a performative function which for Picon characterises a key aspect of contemporary architectural ornament. In this sense, Tours falls on the side of an ornamental display. One is right to wonder, however, if Eisenman in Tours and other projects at this moment actually achieves the removal of, or at least the submission of, any hierarchical logic that resists a certain kind of ornamental schema and thus postulates another response to the problem of figuration announced in that 1986 interview with Breslin. To begin to answer these questions, we turn to Franco Purini who provides another way into foregrounding the multivalent, a device of textual stratification. In this, Purini allows us to think about those ‘exoteric shadows’ that frequently accompany the publication of Eisenman’s work in the years under review and illustrated for Purini in the proposal for the Regional Music Conservatory and Contemporary Arts Center, Tours.41 In looking in more detail at Tours, it is worth considering another project underway in the same years, the Haus Immendorff. The 1993 project brief was for a six-storey building on a relatively modest (257 m 2) site along the waterfront of Düsseldorf Harbour. The mixed-use brief included a café and cabaret, a public plaza, office space, and residential and studio space for the artist client.42 Turning to the project, a striking feature that can guide this cursory analysis is the multiplicity of rapports at work: the connection of the site to adjacent conditions; the history of the site (real and fictional);

106  Part II and the place and distribution of the performance and gallery spaces. Every element speaks, to reference an observation by Kurt Forester in relation to the competition entry for Wexner, to ‘both significance and arbitrariness.’43 The same might be claimed for Tours: the bars of the built form and open space spending their agitated energy on such matters. Eisenman provides another clue in discussing the project for Tours. The approach was characterised by Eisenman in a question about design technique: ‘We asked how a contemporary cultural centre should be given form.’44 In this, we echo Eisenman’s gift suggested in the opening chapter. Tours can be placed, in terms of its conceptual preoccupations as well as triggered effects, in the train of Eisenman’s larger reflections on the figure as blurring. Tours is in part about the continuity of surfaces: accepting that as one characterisation, what is being proposed? The project is masked by a near correspondence between geometries and the building as proposed. The geometries are foreign to the building. Interrogating the drawings and model photographs, one might be justified in claiming that for Eisenman’s project to be approached, one needs to recognise that the practice is one of active participation as distinct from one of passive response. Accepting that characterisation, one is justified in claiming as a provisional assumption that on balance each project becomes, or is intended to serve as, an instrument that triggers changes in the world as catalysers of potential change in the discipline (anteriority) and in the profession (interiority).

5.3 As previous chapters have yet to ask about essence in considering Eisenman’s work, it may be the occasion to do so now. This chapter has started to examine the extent and nature of Eisenman’s work under the optic of a figure understood as something that is not primary relative to some secondary or supporting ground. It has done this with the intent of opening a way of understanding another approach to giving form via an architectural act of figuration, as different from composition and diagramming. It has not been about a single way of thinking nor a single kind of method. Rather, among the renderings and formulations that we have been following, there is evidence of a kind of exhilarating vibrancy in the presentation or releasing of architectural acts. Or perhaps, echoing a comment Rem Koolhaas makes in relation to the impacts or effects of Oswald Mathias Ungers, it is more accurate to suggest that rather than aiming toward something like a method or set of techniques, in the case of Eisenman what is on display is ‘an unbelievably exhilarating presentation of his way of thinking.’45 It might be that, in certain lights, Eisenman’s work on the figure and figurative practices can be better characterised as an ecstasy on his part, one you could be made constantly self-aware of as following a set of

Figures 107 formal-spatial manipulations. Variations and modifications will then naturally include new ideas being projected into the field of architecture. The relevance and resonance of the terms figure and figuration continue to accompany Eisenman. In such an optic, the competition entry for Tokyo Opera House might kick off a set of concluding observations with the temple, echoing the oil rig of Long Beach. Eisenman continues to pursue with different means a figure-figure urbanism in the 2010s. Let’s look at two examples. The ongoing thinking about, and work on, the trope and topic of the figure can be found in an advanced studio run by Eisenman at the Yale School of Architecture. Delivered in Fall 2011, the general title of the studio brief is Figure/Disfigure. It is the third and final of the suite of Venice Project studios. The studio brief sets out the problem as follows: ‘This studio will engage the problem of figure, and the fragmentation of figure, and typology in architecture today by tracing an invented lineage through central and northern Italy, from Pontormo in Florence to Giorgione in Venice, from Aldo Rossi’s Gallaretese II housing in Milan to his Cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena.’46 I return to this and other instances of the experimental qualities of Eisenman’s studio teaching in the final chapter. To take another example: a year after the Yale studio, the lingering vitality of figure and the question of figuration resurfaces in a symposium held in 2012. Eisenman specifically calls out his desire to approach a figurefigure urbanism.47 Eisenman’s remark is made during an overview of a trajectory from the 1980s turn to the ground in the Cannaregio project to just completed work for the 13th International Architecture Exhibition Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 2012 in which Eisenman along with his Yale student explored aspects of the Piranesi’s Campo Marzio drawing alongside parallel interpretations by Jeffrey Kipnis and Pier Vittorio Aureli. As a third optic on these projects, one can also say that certain architects’ work makes the project pregnant with ideas that open the discipline to further change. So, in part, the challenge is to position provisionally the notion of what the project or the writing is causing to happen. Getting there may require one to determine categories of architectural problems and undertake a survey of those problems in order to suggest a way to consider the out-of-focus blurring as a becoming action. Turning back to the projects, and as a form of closing statement, there is an underlying irresolution about the projects. The writing and reading leads to an exhaustive effort required over the years to get from Cannaregio to Romeo and Juliet via the end of the classical. It also includes the call for a manifesto following Rowe’s 1987 talk at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a manifesto around something called decomposition in the Futility paper. Tokyo Opera House can now perhaps be seen as a hinge differentiating the questions asked from those raised in Romeo and Juliet. In a different manner, the Biocenter projects operates as a swerve in a logic of registration. Banyoles maintains a seductive and slipping looseness.

108  Part II

Figure 5.4  Sketch section, Banyoles Olympic Hotel, indicating process registrations. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Sketch for Banyoles Olympic Hotel, Banyoles, Spain 1989, pencil and coloured ink on paper, 44.7 × 91.8 cm, DR1999:0045:003.041)

In this light, Banyoles Olympic Hotel stands as non-regular, non-linear, overlapping, and intersecting pipeds that also or perhaps firstly consider time: not past, not present, not future. See the sketch section in Figure 5.4 of Banyoles on this. Emory University Center for the Arts takes Rowe’s long skinny buildings in a different direction, one agitated by work with memory and topography and specific use. The lines of Tours Arts Centre transform into striations or stratifications registering disciplinary agitations as well as those real and imaginary in the setting. In Tokyo, in a different mode, the figures of past built form palpitate, almost erupting from a field/grid before receding underground. It is in this concession to the cerebral order that reveals certain controlling decisions. In Emory, there is a rational, intellectual order of three-dimensional frames and there is an explosive, almost animal-like animation to overlain volumes and torqued striations. In Tours Arts Centre, volume is hard to discern amid the agitation of striations and stratifications. Elegance and savagery are both and equally at work and provide a final possible characterisation of the architectural conditions being treated.

Notes 1 Franco Purini, “Classicism Lost,” in Blurred Zones: Investigations of the Interstitial, Eisenman Architects 1988-1998 (New York: The Monicelli Press, 2003), 30. 2 Peter Eisenman, “Interview with Lynne Breslin: On Architecture of Text,” SD: Space Design 258 (March 1986): 64. 3 Eisenman, “Interview with Lynne Breslin,” 64. 4 Peter Eisenman, “Urgency Part 2,” a lecture at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, 8 June 2007, 10:50 minutes. Accessed 30-09-2018, https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/events/2681/urgency-2007-rem-koolhaas-and-petereisenman. See in particular 10:50-11:20 min.

Figures 109 5 A description of the symposium and links to session recordings can be found on Vimeo. Accessed 05-08-2021, https://soa.princeton.edu/content/ eisenman-80-architecture-and-resistance. 6 Peter Eisenman, “Coded Rewritings: The Processes of Santiago,” in Code X: The City of Culture of Galicia / Eisenman Architects, ed. Cynthia Davidson (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2005): 29. 7 Eisenman, “Coded Rewritings,” 35. 8 Peter Eisenman, “Interview with Breslin,” 64. 9 Peter Eisenman, “M Emory Games,” in M Emory Games. Emory Center for the Arts, ed. Peter Eisenman (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1995), 58. According to prefacing notes, a version of this text was first published in 1993 to accompany an exhibition at Harvard’s Graduate School dedicated to the Emory University project. 10 Published in 1850, Canina’s map depicts the monuments of ancient Rome, superimposed on a base map of the modern city named after Luigi Canina (1795–1856), an Italian archaeologist and architect. 11 Colin Rowe, “Ideas, Talent, Poetics: A Problem of Manifesto”, in As I Was Saying. Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays, Volume Two Cornelliana, ed. Alexander Caragonne (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996), 343. 12 Henry Cobb, “A Note on the Criminology of Ornament: From Sullivan to Eisenman,” In Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, ed. Cynthia C Davidson (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996), 95. 13 Philip Johnson, “Interview: Biocenter for the University of Frankfurt,” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 88:02 (February 1988): 33. 14 Johnson, “Biocenter,” 35. 15 Johnson, “Biocenter,” 35. 16 Peter Eisenman, “Architecture and the Rhetorical Figure,” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 202 (July 1987): 18. 17 Purini, “Classicism Lost,” 30. 18 Eisenman Architects, Monte Paschi Bank Competition (Siena 1988), Eisenman Architects website project description. Accessed 24-09-2021, https:// eisenmanarchitects.com/Monte-Paschi-Bank-Competition-1988. 19 Eisenman Architects, Monte Paschi Bank Competition. 20 Eisenman Architects, Monte Paschi Bank Competition. 21 Eisenman Architects, Monte Paschi Bank Competition. 22 Peter Eisenman, “Architecture and the Problem of the Weak Image,” a lecture at the Architecture Association, 05-04-1989. Accessed 24-09-2021, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC0f_Wp0I4c. 23 Eisenman, “Problem of the Weak Image,” around 19:30 min 24 Peter Eisenman, “En Terror Firma: In Trails of Grotextes,” in Peter Eisenman Recente projecten/Recent Projects, ed. Arie Graafland (Nijmegen: SUN, 1989), 19. 25 Eisenman Architects, “Carnegie Mellon Research Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1988-1989,” in Tracing Eisenman: Peter Eisenman Complete Works, ed. Cynthia Davidson (New York: Rizzoli, 2006), 144. 26 Peter Eisenman, “Tokyo Opera House,” in Eisenman Architects. Selected and Current Works, ed. Stephen Dobney (Mulgrave, Victoria: The Images Publishing Group Pty Ltd, 1995), 88–91. 27 Peter Eisenman, notes from manuscript sheet, Peter Eisenman fonds, Canadian Centre for Architecture. Eisenman/Robertson Architects. Sketch and notes for Tokyo Opera House Competition, Tokyo, Japan 1985, reprographic copy, 28 × 43.2 cm, DR1999:0200:003, reproduced in Figure 5.1 28 “Tokyo Opera House,” in Eisenman Architects: Selected and Current Works, ed. Stephen Dobney (Mulgrave, Australia: Images Publishing, 1995), 88–91.

110  Part II 29 Raphael Moneo, Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2004), 173. 30 Peter Eisenman, notes from manuscript sheet, Peter Eisenman fonds, Canadian Centre for Architecture. Eisenman/Robertson Architects. Sketch and notes for Tokyo Opera House Competition, Tokyo, Japan 1985, reprographic copy, 28 × 43.2 cm, DR1999:0200:003, reproduced in Figure 5.1 31 Peter Eisenman, “Biocenter, University of Frankfurt am Main, BRD, 1987,” in Recente Projecten Peter Eisenman Recent Projects, ed. Arie Graafland, (Amsterdam: Idea Books, 1989), 127–136, 127. 32 Peter Eisenman in Archaeology of the Digital 01: Peter Eisenman and Greg Lynn discuss Biozentrum Biology Center for Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany 1987 (Montréal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2014), Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/au/book/peter-eisenmanbiozentrum/id826739623, pages 19, 20. 33 Peter Eisenman, “Banyoles Olympic Hotel Competition,” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 252 (September 1991): 112. 34 Jeffrey Kipnis, “A Mattter of Respect,” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 232 (January 1990): 134–137. 35 Eisenman Architects, “Monte Paschi Bank Competition, Siena, Itally, 1988,” in Tracing Eisenman: Peter Eisenman Complete Works, ed. Cynthia Davidson (New York: Rizzoli, 2006), 170. 36 Peter Eisenman, “Banyoles Olympic Hotel Competition.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 252 (September 1991): 114. See also: Eisenman Architects, “Banyoles Olympic Hotel,” in Tracing Eisenman: Peter Eisenman Complete Works (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2006), 170. 37 Antoine Picon, “Ornament of the City,” in Preston Scott Cohen, Lightfall. Genealogy of a Museum, Herta and Paul Amir Building Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Milano: Skira, 2016). 38 Picon, “Ornament,” 29, 30. 39 Picon, “Ornament,” 31. 40 Picon, “Ornament,” 31. 41 Purini, “Classicism Lost,” 30. 42 Project information, drawings and model photographs have been published in: “Haus Immendorff, Düsseldorf Germany 1993,” in El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997): 132–137. 43 Kurt W. Forster, “Traces and Treason of a Tradition. A Critical Commentary on Graves’ and Eisenman/Robertson’s Projects for the Ohio State University Center for the Visual Arts,” in A Center for the Visual Arts. The Ohio State University Competition, eds. Peter Arnell and Ted Bickford (New York: Rizzoli, 1984), 137. 44 Peter Eisenman, “Tours Center for Contemporary Arts and Music Conservatory,” El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1900-1997 83 (1998): 138. 45 Rem Koolhaas, “In conversation with Rem Koolhaas on Oswald Mathias Ungers. Interviewed by Jeremy Alain Siegel, Melissa Constantine, Matt Eshleman, and Steven Zambrano Cascante,” in The Cornell Journal of Architecture 8 (2010): 161. 46 Peter Eisenman with Matt Roman Yale School of Architecture, Unit 1104a, Fall 2011, “Venice Project III – Figure/Disfigure”, unpublished studio outline, collection of the Author. 47 A video recording of the symposium can be found here: https://soa.princeton. edu/content/eisenman-80-architecture-and-resistance, Peter Eisenman Symposium Part 1 (20121109: Discipline), accessed 05-08-2021. Eisenman’s comments about the ground as other and figure-figure urbanism occurs around

Figures 111 1:06:00 ‘… the other becomes internal to the discipline of architecture and particular to the ground as other is an idea of figure-figure urbanism…’ He continues: ‘the ground becomes figure [in the all gold model of Piranesi’s Campo Marzio] in what I would call a figure-figure urbanism.’ An image of the model and a description of the work can be found on the Eisenman website. Accessed 22-09-2021, https://eisenmanarchitects.com/ Piranesi-Variations-2012.

Bibliography Cobb, Henry. “A Note on the Criminology of Ornament: From Sullivan to Eisenman.” In Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, edited by Cynthia C Davidson, 95–97. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996. Dobney, Stephen, ed. Eisenman Architects: Selected and Current Works. Mulgrave, Australia: Images Publishing, 1995. Eisenman Architects. “Monte Paschi Bank Competition, Siena, Italy, 1988.” In Tracing Eisenman: Peter Eisenman Complete Works, edited by Cynthia Davidson, 168–169. New York: Rizzoli, 2006. Eisenman Architects. “Banyoles Olympic Hotel.” In Tracing Eisenman: Peter Eisenman Complete Works, 170–173. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2006. Eisenman Architects. “Carnegie Mellon Research Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1988-1989.” In Tracing Eisenman: Peter Eisenman Complete Works, edited by Cynthia Davidson, 144–147. New York: Rizzoli, 2006. Eisenman Architects. “Monte Paschi Bank Competition (Siena 1988)”. Eisenman Architects website project description. Accessed 24-09-2021, https://eisenman architects.com/Monte-Paschi-Bank-Competition-1988. Eisenman, Peter. “Tokyo Opera House.” In Eisenman Architects: Selected and Current Works, edited by Stephen Dobney, 88–91. Mulgrave, Australia: Images Publishing, 1995. Eisenman, Peter and Greg Lynn. Archaeology of the Digital 01: Peter Eisenman and Greg Lynn Discuss Biozentrum Biology Center for Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany 1987. Montréal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2014. Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/au/book/peter-eisenman-biozentrum/ id826739623. Eisenman, Peter and Matt Roman. “Yale School of Architecture, Unit 1104a, Fall 2011, Venice Project III – Figure/Disfigure,” unpublished studio outline, collection of the Author. Eisenman, Peter. “Architecture and the Problem of the Weak Image.” A lecture at the Architecture Association, 05-04-1989. Accessed 24-09-2021, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=GC0f_Wp0I4c. Eisenman, Peter. “Architecture and the Rhetorical Figure.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 202 (July 1987): 17–22. Eisenman, Peter. “Banyoles Olympic Hotel Competition.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 252 (September 1991): 112–127. Eisenman, Peter. “Biocenter, University of Frankfurt am Main, BRD, 1987.” In Recente Projecten Peter Eisenman Recent Projects, edited by Arie Graafland, 127–136. Amsterdam: Idea Books, 1989.

112  Part II Eisenman, Peter. “Coded Rewritings: The Processes of Santiago.” In Code X: The City of Culture of Galicia/Eisenman Architects, edited by Cynthia Davidson, 27–35. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2005. Eisenman, Peter. “En Terror Firma: In Trails of Grotextes.” In Peter Eisenman Recente projecten/Recent Projects, edited by Arie Graafland, 19–24. Nijmegen: SUN, 1989. Eisenman, Peter. “Interview With Lynne Breslin: On Architecture of Text.” SD: Space Design 258 (March 1986): 63–65. Eisenman, Peter. “M Emory Games.” In M Emory Games. Emory Center for the Arts, edited by Peter Eisenman, 58–59. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1995. Eisenman, Peter. “Tokyo Opera House.” In Eisenman Architects. Selected and Current Works, edited by Stephen Dobney, 88–91. Mulgrave, Victoria: The Images Publishing Group Pty Ltd, 1995. Eisenman, Peter. “Tours Center for Contemporary Arts and Music Conservatory.” El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1900-1997 83 (1998): 138–143. Eisenman, Peter. “Urgency Part 2.” Lecture at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, 8 June 2007. Accessed 30-09-2018, https://www.cca. qc.ca/en/events/2681/urgency-2007-rem-koolhaas-and-peter-eisenman. Forster, Kurt W. “Traces and Treason of a Tradition. A Critical Commentary on Graves’ and Eisenman/Robertson’s Projects for the Ohio State University Center for the Visual Arts.” In A Center for the Visual Arts. The Ohio State University Competition, edited by Peter Arnell and Ted Bickford, 135–139. New York: Rizzoli, 1984. Johnson, Philip. “Interview: Biocenter for the University of Frankfurt.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 88, no. 02 (February 1988): 29–38. Kipnis, Jeffrey. “A Matter of Respect.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 232 (January 1990): 134–137. Koolhaas, Rem. “In Conversation With Rem Koolhaas on Oswald Mathias Ungers. Interviewed by Jeremy Alain Siegel, Melissa Constantine, Matt Eshleman, and Steven Zambrano Cascante.” The Cornell Journal of Architecture 8 (2010): 159–171. Moneo, Raphael. Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2004. Picon, Antoine. “Ornament of the City.” In Lightfall. Genealogy of a Museum, Herta and Paul Amir Building Tel Aviv Museum of Art, edited by Preston Scott Cohen, 29–31. Milano: Skira, 2016. Purini, Franco. “Classicism Lost.” In Blurred Zones: Investigations of the Interstitial: Eisenman Architects 1988-1998, 26–31. New York: The Monicelli Press, 2003. Rowe, Colin. “Ideas, Talent, Poetics: A Problem of Manifesto”.” In As I Was Saying. Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays, Volume Two Cornelliana, edited by Alexander Caragonne, 277–354. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1996.

6

Event

6.1 Any number of directions unfold out of a further strain of Peter Eisenman’s architectural work from the late 1980s and early 1990s. One such direction is attached to event. The theme of the event was in the air in the late 1980s. On the one hand, the architectural problems evoked around event retain a tie to themes examined in earlier projects, and to which Eisenman would return. On the other hand, there are singular conditions under consideration which evolve, flower, and then ebb away. Two projects can serve as beginning points for setting out certain prevalent preoccupations on and around the theme of event in the architecture of Eisenman. Rebstockpark Master Plan (Frankfurt am Main, 1990–1992) and Aronoff Center for Design and Art (Cincinnati, 1988–1996) delineate aspects of event and out of considerations we see what they put on display or add to this examination of architectural qualities associated with event. Rebstockpark occupies the Eisenman Architects office for some three years towards the end of the period I have been considering and is the object of a series of texts by Eisenman. Directly and indirectly referencing Rebstock, these include ‘Unfolding Events: Frankfurt Rebstockpark and the Possibility of a New Urbanism,’1 ‘K Nowhere To Fold,’2 and ‘Folding in Time: The Singularity of Rebstock.’3 Rebstockpark Master Plan can be taken as an instance of Eisenman working with this notion of architecture’s contemporaneity as event. In this project, and to focus on morphology and certain of the most obvious features, there is a shift from the bars and plates of Banyoles and of Aronoff to folds. Ignasi de Solà-Morales, writing a few years later about the situation of architecture, is compelled to comment on the fold, describing it as that between which is not concerned with permanent typologies nor with deep structures. While not specifically referencing Eisenman’s Rebstockpark, one senses the protagonists might be an early phase Eisenman (with all the talk about deep structure) and an early Rossi. For Solà-Morales, the contemporary condition thought of as event leads him DOI: 10.4324/9780429059964-9

114  Part II to suggest that what is relevant for architectural culture is ‘the provisional instant. The intransitive event.’4 Rebstockpark delivers an instantiation of one development of this idea and its translation into architectural and urban forms. Other projects considered in this chapter provide different explications or illustrations of the reach of architectural questions raised by the idea of the event and the architectural responses solicited. Another comment, now from Robert Somol on Rebstockpark, further expands the context for the terms of reference around event. Somol writes: ‘The Rebstockpark project directs an architectural “event,” a manifestation of “weak time,” to the extent that it elicits an active reframing of typology, context, function, and archaeology.’5 On the boards in the office in the same years as Rebstockpark, Aronoff Center for Design can be claimed to be motivated by similar but other concerns and provides a second approach to thinking about event in Eisenman. Different from a concern with continuity on display in Rebstockpark, in Aronoff one senses form is bound and then let loose in a movement of capture and release. It can perhaps be characterized as an architectural gesture liberating pent-up forces in a spirit that extends out on a different plane of investigation. Perhaps it is an example of decompositional procedures that can be interpreted as demonstrating the futility of that too great an emphasis on the object announced a decade earlier. Perhaps it also reveals an absence different from the explorations of Venice of a decade earlier. Conventional responses to a project of Eisenman should be considered with suspicion, this is not to say ignored. In the case of Aronoff, one is left with a sense that visitors and critics share or acknowledge certain inescapable conditions, and two thematic lines can be used to pick up on analytical strains in the building and what might be called its magical characteristics. One line of inquiry concerns interpretations of the building as animate: a living thing. After visiting the building, Kurt Foster is moved to claim that the building is inhabited by ‘a moving body, or … a creeping flow.’6 Henry Cobb, following a similar encounter, announces with some astonishment that the building has succeeded against all taboo to be about ornament that is to have ‘a life,’7 here referencing Louis Sullivan for whom ornamentation rather is always partially about emotional life impulses. Another line of inquiry discerns more strictly spatial and morphological qualities in the project. Several commentators, for example, discover in Aronoff a building which has no interior. Or better, it is the case of an interior which has been turned inside out. Others see the building as manifesting an absence of any figure or is solely figural expression rendered through agitated surfaces and colour shifts. Others see the building as only about forces given expression in uncontained volumes. Sarah Whiting suggests other features deserve calling out, such as the linear atrium. For Whiting, rather than existing as a point of stable reference,

Event 115 the atrium contradicts or resists such a hierarchical interpretation. In the case of Aronoff, the atrium rather is interpreted to serve to destabilise a singly univocal reading in favour of one which reinforces, or at least references, what Eisenman himself has advocated for as architecture’s inherent multiplicity.8 Cynthia Davidson provides another take when trying to come to terms with the strangeness of the missing promenade in favour of a building/machine that is characterised by a specific form of ‘defiance,’9 one the office retrospectively was still coming to grapple with. This resistance to conventional tropes marks the criticality of the project as a work on architectural knowledge that contributes to or continues that project of Eisenman’s to, if not invert, then certainly to inflect certain conventional tropes of reading in a practice of resistance discussed in Chapter 1. At the same time, and in so doing, it announces an opening towards or openness to new unimagined opportunities: that trajectory of endless possibilities used in the opening chapter. Other commentators have observed that whereas at first glance Aronoff may appear as somehow sugar-coated and by implication all surface and no substance, there is an underlying break or nascent force within that photographs cannot capture and that experience of the building refutes. The absence of conventional devices such as a promenade, otherwise assumed to go along with twentieth-century architecture without exception even if present, does not do justice to what is going on, or not going on. Herbert Muschamp’s review published shortly after the building’s opening in 1996 alludes to this fact and the architectural forces evident to him at that moment. For Muschamp, it is in part all about, perhaps surprisingly, history. The architectural problem writes Muschamp ‘turns out to be that of history.’10 Which history is it? The history problem Muschamp refers to is not a specific moment but a period as well as a protagonist. In other words, Muschamp suggests that the project for Aronoff can also be understood as a meaningful setting to work on ‘the tradition of modern architecture.’ Writes Muschamp: ‘… this is not a building one simply walks through. One works through it, as if it were an emotional problem.’11 A number of questions can already be asked following this quick foray. By what means and in what forms does event – as idea and composition device – appear in the thought and design projects of Eisenman at this period? Which heretofore latent architectural qualities are revealed, and which new conditions are made possible, by means of Eisenman’s specific engagement with and use of the event? Which form generation devices and strategies are rendered in the Atocha 123 Hotel, Yokohama International Port Competition, and the New National Museum of Korea? Can they be said to characterise an ‘architecture of event’? Adopting the research findings as heuristic frames, how might one teach the event in an advanced architecture studio? Within the limits of this chapter, this last question will only be alluded to, with certain elements picked up in the treatment of Eisenman’s studio teaching in the closing chapter, Teaching Displacement.

116  Part II

6.2 Event occupies an always latent and sometimes overt preoccupation in Eisenman’s thought and practice through the 1990s. Event rears up as well in Eisenman’s contribution to the 1992 Anywhere conference proceedings. The term specifically occurs in a prefacing note as part of a list of seven theoretical issues that Eisenman claims are engaged in his conference contribution and by extension of potential relevance to architecture at that moment. The seven theoretical concerns in the order Eisenman introduces them are: the loss of place, the time of process, the notion of event, heterotopia as program, the question of phallocentrism in high-rise buildings, the idea of monument, and the idea of incomplete form.12 These re-emerge in the theoretical writings. 6.2.1 The essay ‘The City as Memory and Immanence’ broaches the theme of architecture as event in the 1986 publication Zone.13 In this essay, Eisenman is searching for a condition or concept which is differentiated from continuity. This latter concept that of continuity, is taken as a sign or symptom of the traditional Western city, one that entails value or is characterised by certain qualities. As discussed in the opening chapter’s analysis of ‘The Ends of the Classical’ essay, the Western city for Eisenman is symmetrical (vertebrate), ordered (hierarchical), and continuous (a closed, finite presence).14 Wherein lies the conflict in these characteristics for Eisenman? According to Eisenman, these characteristics or aspects create a limit. They repress something. Eisenman starts to qualify what he means: ‘the [Western] city has, on the one hand, repressed the possibilities of a fragmentary or unstable rhetorical structure and, on the other, naturalized a reductive functionalism and organicism, endowing it with originary and archaic beauty.’15 Unpacking this proposition would suggest that at least two strands of an open city are denied, or restrained from reaching full potentiality. One strand favours the immanent capacities in fragmentary structures. What is unnatural for Eisenman, to go to a second strand, is reductive functionalism and one assumes a reductive organicism. Even if not used explicitly in the ‘City as Memory and Immanence’ essay, event enters the picture as a lens or term for thinking about working with discontinuity as opposed to continuity. It is proposed to render an other idea or construct of the city that is not limiting. Event, to use Eisenman’s words in another formulation, can be thought of as a destabilising agent. In this regard, event is an idea or concept that has the power or potential to destabilize all these states or conditions that limit the city including that of origin and originary value. Thus Eisenman allows one to think of this as a strategy of conceiving or positioning the city as a palimpsest that evolves, for example, around the

Event 117 idea/device of event. He concludes by claiming, a claim he will continue to circle, that this other city is one that ‘does not close or unify, but rather opens and disperses.’16 This extension of concepts, ideas, and techniques will evolve in subsequent writing. Other terms are set up and used as provisional holding points or marks on an architectural proposition whose job is to imagine an architecture of discontinuity with qualities that replace or supplant those of the traditional city. Thus, it is an architecture that is non vertebrate, non-hierarchical, and open, returning specifically to those categories raised earlier. 6.2.2 ‘Unfolding Events’ was first published in 1992. The title seems to say it all, but as is often the case with Eisenman, there is an intentional ambiguity or misdirection at work: a positive ambiguity. Is it about architectural qualities that devolve into disorder? Is it a question about conditions that were in some prior state that was whole or complete? That’s one approach to unpacking the intent. Another interpretation of the title might suggest it is about being in the moment, part of the time as it unfolds, in an ever disrupted present. There is a present that never fully arrives. Yet another reading might suggest or lean towards something less linear and directional and more disrupted: that which is unknown or cannot yet be known is approaching and we can have no certainty. Which are the architectural allusions or alliances being set up in this essay? Event occupied an always latent and sometimes overt preoccupation in Eisenman’s thought and practice during the 1990s. As he notes in ‘Unfolding Events’: ‘Architecture must now address the event.’17 Before turning specifically to this essay, and in order to suggest further context, let’s take two statements from the period. The first from Eisenman himself. In thinking about the questions raised in the project for the Church for the year 2000, he writes: ‘The ideas of proximity and distance, of route and absent center, and thus the idea of the transgression of type and function, became a critique of embodiment. This critique produced an object that was neither figure nor ground but rather could be considered interstitial – figure as ground.’18 Here, this interstitiality is part and parcel of work on the event. The second statement is from K Michael Hays, returning to and reflecting on the potential lessons of Aronoff. Hays writes: ‘The Aronoff Center forces the recognition that theory must reserve for the architectural object the chance to provoke radically new responses not anticipated by a prior reading instrument that would try in vain to account for it in advance or even describe it afterward.’19 The architect-theorist’s mission in this light is to create the conditions of possibility for the unanticipated to be allowed for.

118  Part II Let’s again give the word to Eisenman: ‘Architecture must now address the event.’20 Some six years after ‘The City as Memory and Immanence,’ the event as target or ambition is more emphatic. In ‘Unfolding Events,’ event is first invoked in the context of a discussion of a discontinuous condition, specifically of that condition in relation to ephemeral events such as rock concerts. Eisenman goes so far as to describe the rock concert, a literal event, as ‘the archetypal form of architectural event.’21 Accepting that statement as a temporary or cryptic metaphor, how does this translate into an architectural response? What aspects or qualities are being resisted? Which energies are realising their catalytic force and effecting change? In the essay ‘Unfolding Events,’ among other crutches, it is the dialectical pair figure/ground that is being destabilised. Or perhaps it is more accurate to describe Eisenman’s provocation as starting to frame the conditions of possibility for an architecture that is different from one reliant on the opposition figure/ground. Let’s listen to Eisenman: ‘What is needed is the possibility of reading figure/object and ground within another frame of reference.’ He continues: ‘Such a new reading might reveal other conditions that may always have been immanent or repressed in the urban fabric. Such a reframing would perhaps allow for the possibilities of new urban structures and for existing structures to be seen in a way that they too are redefined.’22 Eisenman calls out the promise or evokes the premise of several shifts. A reading not reliant or beholden to figure/ground stabilities revealing as well overlaps with his work on figuration discussed in Chapter 5. In so doing are revealed or allowed to reveal and inhabit architecture’s imaginary heretofore repressed, missing, or forgotten conditions. These ‘other’ conditions might be harbingers of what he names ‘new urban structures.’ In the project reviews that follow later in the chapter, I only consider whether any could reasonably be located on the side of urban structures. Eisenman goes on to characterise what might be called an architecture of event, or an architectural possibility of event as relating to a condition of a ‘slightly out of focus’ relation to what exists. This slight shift then potentially translates into a form making procedure relevant to a discussion of Atocha 123 and The New National Museum of Korea, for example. Eisenman continues: ‘This out-of-focus condition, then, would permit a blurring or displacing of the whole, which is both old and new. One such possibility of displacement can be found in the form of the fold.’23 As he continues, this displacement ambition finds a certain resonance for architectural acts with Gilles Deleuze and, differently, René Thom’s idea and use of the fold. The former is interested in an object-event that results and the latter in the potential the fold gives to model or visualise mathematics of events such as catastrophes and waves.

Event 119 Eisenman concludes with a discussion of where this linking of fold and event might lead. ‘The fold,’ he writes, ‘gives the traditional idea of edge new dimension: what was seen as an abrupt line now has a volumetric dimension … the fold [and by association or analogy an architecture of event] is not merely a formal device, but a way of unfolding new social organizations from existing urban environments … setting off urbanism in a new direction.’24 6.2.3 Roughly ten years after the publication of ‘The City as Memory and Immanence,’ and four years after ‘Unfolding Events,’ Eisenman publishes ‘Presentness and the “Being-Only-Once” of Architecture.’25 Where Eisenman was previously concerned with destabilising oppositions, ones he sees limiting architecture, such as figure/ground in favour of creating the conditions of possibility for other states, in this paper among other theoretical concerns he is endeavouring to open up the conditions of possibility for blurring the notion of ‘type.’ He does this through the frame of a state or condition that he calls a condition of ‘presentness.’ One also needs to consider the use of The Truth in Painting behind this essay. Eisenman imagines an ‘only once’ for architecture that is different from that of, say, a painting which in turn might just open up another possibility, perhaps including that of architecture conceived like ‘the idea of the event’ in the sense Jacques Derrida develops.26 This should be considered in another setting. As the ‘Presentness’ essay continues, Eisenman brings proximate the notions of architecture as event, understood as a condition of ‘being-onlyonce’ or in ‘the time frame of the moment’27 and ‘subversion of type.’28 In these ideas, Eisenman implies that that which is repressed is realised. In other words, that which is being resisted is the coupling of presence and meaning. He writes: ‘It will be argued here that this unique conventionality of architecture, which links its iconicity, and instrumentality, already contains the capacity to open up and separate its condition of presence from its meaning. This opening up creates a possibility for another condition… it is the deconstruction of this natural relationship [between presence and meaning, of the origin or originary, of the identity of place or site] that puts into place another being-only-once that is unique to architecture. This condition can be properly called presentness.’29 In unpacking the elements in play, we might begin to arrive at some sense of what is at stake. In order to illustrate this, Eisenman refers to the projects of Le Corbusier. Ronchamp, he argues, does not destabilise or push along the idea of the type ‘chapel.’ La Tourette Monastery, on the other hand, subverts a supposedly stable and originary notion of the type. As Eisenman writes: ‘At La Tourette this condition of presentness remains because the

120  Part II dislocation of the type has not been reabsorbed in the conventional idea of the monastery type.’30 In his own work, Eisenman argues that the Greater Columbus Convention Center is on the side of the normal as a sign of the convention centre. Whereas, according to Eisenman, ‘the Wexner Center is an example of presentness precisely because it subverts the instrumentality and iconicity of the museum.’31 I will come back to these writings at the end. However, for the moment, let’s listen to secondary writers who have commented on event in Eisenman. 6.2.4 What qualities does Eisenman imagine are tied to this unique ‘being-onlyonce’? Certainly, the decoupling of architectural meaning from presence. To illustrate what he is thinking about at this moment, consider the interpretations of a number of scholars who have engaged with Eisenman in his use of the event. Five are considered in the following section: Raphael Moneo, Jeffrey Kipnis, Sandford Kwinter, Ignasi de Solà-Morales, and Franco Purini. Raphael Moneo provides a useful launch in the analysis of certain projects on the side of event, noting a swerve from building towards phenomena or event. Confronted with Eisenman’s Wexner Center Ohio State, Moneo writes: ‘… structure and grids are what our eyes see rather than references to figural aspects which used to characterise buildings.’ To his astonishment, Moneo arrives at the follow conclusion: ‘Eisenman Trott’s architecture emerges as an architectural phenomenon without assuming the condition of a building.’32 Kipnis characterises certain of Eisenman’s projects as rendering weak form. These projects are also characterised by Kipnis as establishing the conditions of possibility for certain undecidability which, as argued above, align with the idea and term event. Sanford Kwinter provides another way to think about event as that which is triggered by certain buildings. Having already written about Aronoff at the project stage, when confronted with the building as built, Kwinter is compelled to turn to the event as a building quality, the building being that which erupts.33 Ignasi de Solà-Morales, in a more general diagnosis of architectural culture in the late 1990s, introduces the concept of event as a point in time, a ‘provisional instant’34 to, at least in part, characterise an architecture that works to avoid the centrisms of typology and deep structure.

6.3 In the same roughly ten-year period of the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s in which Eisenman was publishing the three essays considered in the first part of this chapter, he and his office were engaged with a number of projects.

Event 121 Three projects from the period can be considered as shaped in part by Eisenman’s event thinking. Is there evidence of ‘event’ as formulated in the parallel writing at play in the projects? Which composition or form generation devices might signal the presence of event thinking? Which qualities are on display? Different from the projects concerned with ground considered in Chapter 4, and from those projects in Chapter 5 that manifest a period of preoccupation with the act of figuration, in this chapter we consider projects that trial aspects of the event. Event figures in project descriptions and critical reviews throughout the period. The Alteka Office Building (Tokyo, 1991), for example, is characterised as promoting a process, a design technique in which the building ‘becomes an event.’35 The project description echoes an approach from the period, one that positions the architectural activity on the side of evasion, and this echoes the practice of resistance discussed in Chapter 1. In this instance, Eisenman suggests the project is part of a practice which might mime a city state qualified as ‘contingent’ as distinct from a city of permanence, stability, and constancy. In its stead Eisenman claims the work of architecture can be postulated to stage other states: those of fluctuation, of form in a perpetual state of development, and, following the project description, of a form that does not reference or defer to anything essential but rather might fall on the side of ‘becoming.’36 6.3.1  Atocha 123 Hotel According to the archives held at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, the unexecuted project for the Atocha 123 Hotel started in 1989 and the last phase of engagement, at what appears to be the initial design development/pre contract documentation stage, was in 1993. This corresponds to the years in which ‘Unfolding Events’ was being written and published. The hotel was designed for a corner site in Madrid. Project files deposited at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) comprise 766 drawings (18 OS1 box folders, 1 OS2 box folder); 16 models; 12 rolls of drawing; and 1.28 linear metres of textual records. Though unbuilt, the outcome might not have been too dissimilar to that of the Alteka Office Building in Tokyo. The process sketch exploring one massing and vertical plane solution in Figure 6.1 suggests this sensibility. In unpublished and published drawings and model photos, one can clearly see the plan/volume layering, rotation, and inflection reviewed earlier in the sketches. There is also a presentation model from the street level of the main Atocha street elevation. Based on the detailed façade/building envelope studies, the project continued to evolve to a high level of detail. See Figure 6.2. Atocha 123 Hotel puts into evidence such issues as weak form and ornamentation and thus, in the sense developed above, renders aspects of event.

122  Part II

Figure 6.1  Process sketch, Atocha 123 Hotel. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Sketch perspective for Atocha 123 Hotel, Madrid, Spain 1989-1993, pencil on translucent paper, 46 × 75.5 cm, DR1999:0053:002:001)

Figure 6.2  Process sketch, corner detail, Atocha 123 Hotel. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Corner detail for Atocha 123 Hotel, Madrid, Spain 1989-1993, pencil on translucent paper, 61 × 66 cm, DR1999:0053:002:002)

Event 123 6.3.2  Yokohama International Port Competition Yokohama is one of the last of the projects in this cluster chronologically, which nonetheless provides a useful beginning. Rajachman might prove helpful in thinking about and acting on Yokohama. So, without worrying about beginnings and ends, Yokohama does not integrally realise the event idea. But it may add a further case for the interrogation and in coming to some cursory understanding of the utility and reach of event in Eisenman’s thinking. See Figures 6.3 and 6.4. The archives held at the CCA are dated 1994 and the full project name is Yokohama International Port Terminal Design Competition. There are some 171 drawings in 6 OS1 box folders and some 0.1 linear metres of textual records held at the CCA.37 At the time of my visit, the archives had yet to be fully catalogued, and thus there may be other material that comes to light later. To start, as a prompt for reflection on the conditions at work in Yokohama, one can ask: What does the architecture do? What are some of the consequences of the project for Yokohama, if for example, one makes a claim for coherences, and if so what kind of coherence? Three kinds of consequences gathered in tropes, formal relations, and effects (material and ideological) provide a beginning. Let’s consider initially a few process drawings and some of the design development materials. One point of interest is Eisenman’s use of precedent to begin or ignite the design thinking. As Eisenman has frequently discussed in interviews, from a certain point of view, architecture is (just) the transformation of precedent. Could one say that in his use of the term, event can refer to forces at the time: conceptual concerns, form generation devices (think of mathematics), history (both real and fictional)? The CCA archives contain several study panels of very different case studies. In the sheets reviewed is documentation on OMA’s Zeebrugge Sea Terminal, Norman Foster’s port building, and Renzo Piano’s Kansai International Airport. The office seemed particularly interested in diagramming the circulation in this axonometric and in diagramming use distribution in this diagram. From these, the office starts to block out or bulk out the project. A sketch is one of the few that appears to be in Eisenman’s hand (though this is not certain); most of the drawings are in another hand or annotation. The event the office takes as a firm starting point is wave fluctuations by month in this series. It is a study of volumetric units. Then there is a move to a continuous, not to say coherent, form. I could not locate the final presentation material, and thus additional research will be required to fully unpack the potential relevance of this project to the issues under examination. If we consider the winning realised project by Foreign Office Architects and compare it with the diagrams of the Eisenman office, we could undertake a different discussion about the various plan and section ideas. The

124  Part II

Figure 6.3   Process sketches, Yokohama International Port Competition. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Sketches for Yokohama International Port Terminal Design Competition, Yokohama, Japan 1994, pencil and coloured ink on paper, 22 × 28 cm, DR1999:0073:001:001)

Event 125

Figure 6.4  Process axonometric sketch, Yokohama International Port Competition. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Axonometric for Yokohama International Port Terminal Design Competition, Yokohama, Japan 1994, reprographic copy with ink, 22 × 28 cm, DR1999:0073:001:010)

Foreign Office Architects’ submission might be claimed to be on the side of animal/skeleton or of phenomena. The Eisenman Architects submission could be then placed on the side of abstraction. And is the latter more about event? 6.3.3  The New National Museum of Korea The architect’s dedication to the concept of blurring achieves certain extremes in the competition development drawings for The New National Museum of Korea. In this project, can we start with a claim that the project can be considered an architectural investigation of the capacities of formal and spatial strategies to interlace disjointed organisations? To understand what is at stake, assume one avoids focusing not on program, nor on use, but rather to consider the project as tightly bound to the work itself. A case perhaps of incident versus norm. Is Eisenman on the side of space fixation? This might be a reasonable beginning for thinking about the drawings and exhibit prepared by Eisenman for the National Museum of Korea’s international architectural competition. Among the projects considered thus far in this chapter, the drawings reveal reciprocal and constantly fluctuating relationships between matrix and figure. The National Museum of Korea can be read to instigate, among

126  Part II

Figure 6.5  Process diagram, The New National Museum of Korea. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Isometric for The New National Museum of Korea, Seoul, South Korea 1995, reprographic copy, 22.8 × 32.6 cm, DR1999:0074.001.001)

other conditions, fluctuation in states reciprocating in reading from object to texture, solid to void, randomness to order, incident to norm it is so far from a conventional presentation of issues. What drives the interrogation of plates or strata? One assumes an influence of plaiting. See Figure 6.5. From the drawings, the work – as space and resultant form – appears to contract and then congeal, with space-figures erupting from a field matrix and then returning to a more stable space-figure again. This might justify one characterising the effort as being in the realm of space composition, following Rowe’s use of the terms in his 1979 Cubitt lecture, following Berenson, and following Hildebrand. In later years and more recent interviews, Eisenman emphatically positions himself on the side of space obsession and away from object fixation. In what lies the elusiveness of Eisenman’s project for the National Museum of Korea? Which concepts are generated by the project, some perhaps heretofore without architectural significance? Which formal-spatial effects – whether irreducible or irreproducible – are given shape and otherwise activated by the drawings and other materials? From the CCA archive, perhaps the most arresting image on the National Museum of Korea project is that of an eye level perspective taken, conventionally described, as looking up into a space. See Figure 6.6. This space is neither inside nor quite outside. The frame of the view is characteristic of a mode of presentation, not to say a convention for the work of the office at this time. In another context, one could follow the lineage and provenance were such an idea anathema to the Eisenman project. Examples

Event 127

Figure 6.6  Progress presentation panel, The New National Museum of Korea. Peter Eisenman fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eisenman Architects. Plan and perspective for The New National Museum of Korea, Seoul, South Korea 1995, collage on translucent paper, 81.8 × 116.3 cm, DR1999:0074:005:007)

can be found in Biocentrum (the gap between built form), Aronoff (entry atrium), Banyoles (lobby), and Wexner (gallery view at stair looking up to roof-skylight). Atocha has no interior and, to a degree, is only played out in the planes of the façade elevation. This reading is supported by the intense work and time given in Atocha to the small-scale manipulations in the detailed drawings. Here Eisenman the mannerist is manifesting the multiple readings that were learned in IBA (horizontally) and different from the volumetric agitations of the Koizumi Sangyo Corporation building (Tokyo, 1988–1990). In the case of the National Museum of Korea, the view suggests compression of horizontal plates, paused however momentarily, before they begin a lateral movement, assuming they are held back. There is the evident explanation for them in terms of a before or an after. In this regard, they recall a description Solà-Morales gives of certain projects of Tadao Ando. Written one assumes in 1990 for the Anyone conference and originally appearing in the conference proceedings published in 1991, the essay develops a manner of thinking about an architectural position that is different from or outside what might be characterised as an architecture aligned with a ‘universal metaphysic’ or with ‘expressionist subjectivism,’ or to follow Solà-Morals directly, a ‘pathetic isolation of existentialism.’38

128  Part II From a certain point of view, this state suggests another translation of event, this time unmoored from history or memory. There is a spatial condition that is independent or outside of a before and after and thus disassociated from ideas of the promenade, hierarchy, and therefore different from an architecture aligned with qualities that Eisenman has placed on the side of metaphysics.

6.4 This chapter provides preliminary notes on the idea and device of the event in Eisenman’s 1990s work and starts to frame an approach to its potential translation into an advanced university research studio, isolating the objects under review. The ideas of event, of ornament, and of a strategy perhaps touching on the strangeness of the interstitial contribute to revealing and articulating processes outside of architecture such that an architecture ‘produced by those very processes’39 potentially results. To bring some sense of preliminary closure to these deliberations, let’s return to the opening questions. To the question: By what means and in what forms does event – as idea and composition device – appear in the writing and design projects of Eisenman at this time? We can see the evidence clearly in the writing. The three primary texts raise a number of aspects or qualities if not to say architectural conditions associated with event in the thinking of Eisenman. Table 6.1 provides one summary. And in response to the opening question: Which heretofore latent architectural aspects are revealed, and which new conditions are made possible, by means of Eisenman’s engagement with and use of the event? This is a larger question and may find one manifestation in Eisenman’s project of resistance. Resisting function, structure, and context in a practice of perpetual critical activities to get to a ‘zero’ condition: denying presence – recall the ideas in the ‘Presentness’ article. The third question: Which form Table 6.1  Aspects of event in period writing of Peter Eisenman

What is being destabilised? Which is the object or focus of critical work Form generation device or concept deployed Reference outside the discipline

City of Memory and Immanence (1986)

Unfolding Events (1992)

Presentness (1995)

Origin Originary Urban processes

Figure/ground

Trace Registration Scaling Freud (city as a palimpsest)

Fold Blurring

The coupling presence and meaning ‘The subversion of type’ Presentness

Leibniz Gilles Deleuze René Thom

Deconstruction Derrida

Event 129 Table 6.2  Comparison of event in Atocha 123 Hotel and Yokomana Port Competition projects by Peter Eisenman

Devices, form generation strategies Expression

Atocha 123 Hotel

Yokohama Port Competition

Fold Rotate Overlay Superposition Volume manipulation Building enclosure agitation Elevation

Trace Modulation Repetition Difference Volume Continuous surface variations Plan

generation devices and strategies are rendered in the Atocha 123 and Yokohama Port Competition projects? Can they be said to characterise an ‘architecture of event’? Table 6.2 gives a composite mapping of these aspects. To take this summary of key aspects even further, we can examine other writings to be interrogated including such primary texts as ‘Zones of Undecidability I,’ ‘The Interstitial Figure,’ ‘Processes of the Interstitial,’ and ‘The Church of the Year 2000.’ One would also look at other projects from the period such as Rebstockpark Master Plan, Aronoff Center for Design and Art (1988– 1996). In addition, one would expand in greater detail the analysis of Eisenman’s writing to consider such secondary authors as Henry Cobb on Aronoff (theoretical frame, but project focus is on less known projects: Atocha), Stan Allen (on event and field), Sanford Kwinter (on time), K Michael Hays (on Aronoff), Philip Johnson (on the Biocenter prooject), and John Rajachman (who has written a number of prescient essays about the ‘fold’ and the ‘event’ in Eisenman in relation to the Rebstockpark Master Plan). Let’s give the next to last word to Moneo: ‘… the project shows his mastery in the manipulation of form that is surely a fruit of the discipline and efforts of previous years. For me, it’s in this mastery that Eisenman’s talent lies, not so much in the extra disciplinary discourse with which he tries to justify his architecture.’40 Consider the possible utility in the characterisation of the difference between sensation and intellection, of sensation over understanding. Wexner can be included in the event architecture sensibility, accepting Jeffrey Kipnis’ characterisation of Wexner’s lattice as on the side of ‘a moment in an elaborate scheme’ rather than ‘a traditional architectural figure such as a trellised pergola.’41 Kipnis continues and it is worth citing him for the range of ideas engaged. ‘While the original objective of Eisenman’s architecture was reading, its ultimate objective [following swerves in the 1980’s and 1990’s] became

130  Part II affect.’42 Perhaps that, in the end, is a reasonable if inadequate summary of his work on event in architecture.

Notes 1 Peter Eisenman, “Unfolding Events: Frankfurt Rebstock and the Possibility of a New Urbanism,” in Unfolding Frankfurt, ed. Eisenman Architects, Albert Speer & Partner, Hanna/Olin (Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1991). 2 Peter Eisenman, “K Nowhere To Fold,” in Anywhere, ed. Cynthia C Davidson (New York: Rizzoli International, 1992). 3 Peter Eisenman, “Folding in Time: The Singularity of Rebstock,” in Folding in Architecture: Architectural Design Profile 102, ed. Greg Lynn (London: Academy Group, Ltd, 1993). 4 Ignasi de Solà-Morales, “From Autonomy to Untimeliness”, in Differences: Topographies of Contemporary Architecture, trans. Graham Thompson, ed. Sarah Whiting (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997), 88. 5 Robert E Somol, “Accidents Will Happen,” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 91:09 (September 1991): 7. 6 Kurt Forster, “Rising from the Land, Sinking into the Ground,” in Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, ed. Cynthia C Davidson (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996), 116. 7 Louis Sullivan, “Ornament in Architecture” (1892), cited by Henry N Cobb, “A Note on the Criminology of Ornament: From Sullivan to Eisenman,” in Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, ed. Cynthia C Davidson (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996), 95. 8 Sarah Whiting, “Building Inside Out: Perspectives on the Conspicuously Inconspicuous,” in Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, ed. Cynthia C Davidson (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996), 103. 9 Cynthia Davidson, “Introduction,” in Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, ed. Cynthia C Davidson (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996), 12. 10 Hubert Muschamp, “Architecture View: Eisenman’s Spatial Extravaganza in Cincinnati,” The New York Times, appearing in print on 21 July 1996, Section 2, page 33 of the National edition. Accessed: 04-10-2021, https:// www.nytimes.com/1996/07/21/arts/architecture-view-eisenman-s-spatialextravaganza-in-cincinnati.html 11 Muschamp, “Architecture View: Eisenman’s Spatial Extravaganza in Cincinnati.” 12 Eisenman, “K Nowhere 2 Fold,” 220. 13 Peter Eisenman, “The City as Memory and Immanence,” in Zone 1, eds. Jonathan Crary, Michel Feher, Hal Foster and Sanford Kwinter (New York: Urzone Inc, 1986), 440, 441. 14 Eisenman, “The City as Memory and Immanence,” 440. 15 Eisenman, “The City as Memory and Immanence,” 440. 16 Eisenman, “The City as Memory and Immanence,” 441. 17 Eisenman, “Unfolding Events,” 422. 18 Peter Eisenman, “Zones of Undecidability I. The Interstitial Figure: The Church for the Year 2000,” in Blurred Zones: Investigations of the Interstitial: Eisenman Architects, 1988-1998 (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2003), 260.

Event 131 19 K. Michael Hays, “Theory After Building,” in Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, ed. Cynthia C Davidson (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996), 26, 27. 20 Peter Eisenman, “Unfolding Events,” in Incorporations, eds. Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter (New York: Zone, 1992), 422. 21 Eisenman, “Unfolding Events,” 423. 22 Eisenman, “Unfolding Events,” 424. 23 Eisenman, “Unfolding Events,” 424. 24 Eisenman, “Unfolding Events,” 426. 25 Peter Eisenman, “Presentness and the ‘Being-Only-Once’ of Architecture,” in Deconstruction Is/In America: A New Sense of the Political, ed. Anselm Haverkamp (New York: New York University Press, 1995). 26 Eisenman, “Presentness,” 139. 27 Eisenman, “Presentness,” 140. 28 Eisenman, “Presentness,” 141. 29 Eisenman, “Presentness,” 139. 30 Eisenman, “Presentness,” 143. 31 Eisenman, “Presentness”, 143. 32 Raphael Moneo, “Unexpected Coincidences,” in Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, The Ohio State University. A building designed by Eisenman/Trott Architects (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1989), 41. 33 Sanford Kwinter, “Can One Go Beyond Piranesi? (Liner Notes for a Building Revisited)”, in Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, ed. Cynthia C Davidson (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996), 152 34 Solà-Morales, “From Autonomy to Untimeliness”, 87. 35 The statement is from the Eisenman Architects office website entry for the Alteka Office Building. Accessed 05/08/2021, https://eisenmanarchitects. com/Alteka-Office-Building-1991 36 See the project description on the Eisenman Architects website. Acessed 05/08/2021, https://eisenmanarchitects.com/Alteka-Office-Building-1991 37 Canadian Centre for Architecture, reference number AP143.S4.D107. At the time I consulted the archived material for this project (November 2019); documents had only been processed at a preliminary level and I only access to a portion of the materials held. Thus, additional material may come to light that expands or contradicts observations made above. 38 Solà-Morales, “From Autonomy to Untimeliness,” 87, 89. 39 Peter Eisenman, “Biocenter for the University of Frankfurt. Eisenman/ Robertson Architects,” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 88:02 (February 1988): 39. 40 Raphael Moneo, Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects, trans. Gina Carino (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2004), 189. 41 Jeffrey Kipnis, “P-Tr’s Progress,” El Croquis: Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997): 44. 42 Kipnis, “P-Tr’s Progress,” 44.

Bibliography Cobb, Henry. “A Note on the Criminology of Ornament: From Sullivan to Eisenman.” In Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, edited by Cynthia C Davidson, 95–97. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996.

132  Part II Davidson, Cynthia. “Introduction.” In Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, edited by Cynthia C Davidson, 12–17. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996. Eisenman Architects. “Alteka Office Building.” Accessed 05/08/2021, https:// eisenmanarchitects.com/Alteka-Office-Building-1991. Eisenman, Peter. “Biocenter for the University of Frankfurt. Eisenman/Robertson Architects.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 88, no. 02 (February 1988): 39–54. Eisenman, Peter. “Folding in Time: The Singularity of Rebstock.” In Folding in Architecture: Architectural Design Profile 102, edited by Greg Lynn, 22–25. London: Academy Group, Ltd, 1993. Eisenman, Peter. “K Nowhere To Fold.” In Anywhere, edited by Cynthia C Davidson, 218–227. New York: Rizzoli International, 1992. Eisenman, Peter. “Presentness and the ‘Being-Only-Once’ of Architecture.” In Deconstruction Is/In America: A New Sense of the Political, edited by Anselm Haverkamp, 134–145. New York: New York University Press, 1995. Eisenman, Peter. “The City as Memory and Immanence.” In Zone 1, edited by Jonathan Crary, Michel Feher, Hal Foster, and Sanford Kwinter, 440–441. New York: Urzone Inc, 1986. Eisenman, Peter. “Unfolding Events.” In Incorporations, edited by Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter, 422–427. New York: Zone, 1992. Eisenman, Peter. “Unfolding Events: Frankfurt Rebstock and the Possibility of a New Urbanism.” In Unfolding Frankfurt, edited by Eisenman Architects, Albert Speer and Partner, Hanna/Olin, 8–17. Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1991. Eisenman, Peter. “Zones of Undecidability I. The Interstitial Figure: The Church for the Year 2000.” In Blurred Zones: Investigations of the Interstitial: Eisenman Architects, 1988-1998, 258–260. New York: The Monacelli Press, 2003. Forster, Kurt. “Rising from the Land, Sinking into the Ground.” In Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, edited by Cynthia C Davidson, 114–119. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996. Hays, Michael K. “Theory After Building.” In Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, edited by Cynthia C Davidson, 20–27. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996. Kipnis, Jeffrey. “P-Tr’s Progress.” El Croquis: Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997): 36–49. Kwinter, Sanford. “Can One Go Beyond Piranesi? (Liner Notes for a Building Revisited).” In Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, edited by Cynthia C Davidson, 152–163. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996. Moneo, Raphael. “Unexpected Coincidences.” In Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, The Ohio State University. A Building Designed by Eisenman/Trott Architects, 40–45. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1989. Moneo, Raphael. Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects, translated by Gina Carino. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2004. Muschamp, Hubert. “Architecture View: Eisenman’s Spatial Extravaganza in Cincinnati.” In The New York Times, appearing in print on 21 July 1996, Section 2, page 33 of the National edition. Accessed: 04-10-2021, https://www.nytimes. com/1996/07/21/arts/architecture-view-eisenman-s-spatial-extravaganza-incincinnati.html

Event 133 Solà-Morales, Ignasi de. “From Autonomy to Untimeliness.” In Differences: Topographies of Contemporary Architecture, translated by Graham Thompson, edited by Sarah Whiting, 72–90. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1997. Somol, Robert E. “Accidents Will Happen.” A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 91, no. 09 (September 1991): 4–7. Whiting, Sarah. “Building Inside Out: Perspectives on the Conspicuously Inconspicuous.” In Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, edited by Cynthia C Davidson, 98–107. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996.

Teaching Displacement

I A dominant style of thinking for architects has been categorised as one based on the part to whole relationships, the idea that fractional relationships necessarily characterise coherent objects and building ensembles as the basis for beauty. The notion that all parts relate to a whole can be taken as one index of the biases practitioners, scholars, and educators have identified in certain modes of thinking and practice whether at the scale of the building or the scale of urban form. Manifesting complexity in design practice, especially at the scale of the city, has been a thematic ambition for an increasing number of disciplines over many years. For the education of architects, the response in certain cases has preceded practice, with research investigations undertaken in the university studio on problems of diversity, plurality, and difference revealing possible mechanisms and operations appropriate to specific fields and also collaborative practices. As an investigation of this condition, in this chapter I extract lessons from Peter Eisenman’s approach to the university architecture studio. In what follows I explore the potential of teaching to form alternatives to what has been characterised as traditional models of design in thinking the relation between architecture and larger systems whether natural or artificial. While the field of inquiry is at the scale of urban form and the specific realm investigated in the case study studios that of the city, findings could be extended to individual buildings and architecture’s relation to natural and artificial systems more generally. A series of questions frame an initial engagement with this theme. By what means can the university studio be the site not just for training in design processes but for knowledge production as well? How does the Eisenman studio function so that it contributes to inflecting discipline biases, limits, and reserves at the level of problematics? In other words, in what manner might the university studio transform that which it is possible to think, and in particular adopt an approach that more closely allows for and works with complexity and plurality? DOI: 10.4324/9780429059964-10

Teaching Displacement 135 As another formulation of the question within the university studio, how best to respond to the dual challenge of transmitting discipline-specific traditions while at the same time remaining open to new contexts, institutions, and ways of building and fabrication? Can these in turn be taken as models for a more supple, sustainable style of design for other domains whether working at the scale of the object or the city? Eisenman has investigated architectural notions that emphatically seek to operate differently or away from the limits perceived in anthropocentrism, accepting for the purposes of this paper that the part to whole bias is one sign of the latter. For Eisenman, such concepts as partial figuration, excavation, overlay, and scaling are aspects of this effort. Previous chapters have isolated writings and projects that take these notions on in one mode or another. It is thus appropriate to also consider by what means and in what forms Eisenman’s studio teaching might elaborate or transform the work. An underlying assumption to be interrogated is that the various activities in Eisenman’s university architecture studios constitute a form of critical experimentation and that these activities contribute to advancing disciplinary knowledge. Two propositions – one conceptual, one methodological – underpin the development of that assumption. The first is that design-led research in the university architecture studio contributes to architectural knowledge in a manner no less vital or effective than more traditional archival, historical, and text-based academic methods. The second proposition: investigations undertaken in the studio at their most creative emerge from a deep critical engagement of architecture’s interiority with something outside the discipline. A survey of Eisenman’s approaches to the university studio is used to develop a preliminary response to these propositions. The examples are Eisenman’s cycle of experimental studios undertaken at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (hereafter GSD) (1983–1985), the Venice Project studios, a suite of studio problems unrolled over three years (2009, 2010, 2011), and his Aggregation Project studio (2013), these last four all undertaken at the Yale School of Architecture. An analysis of the Eisenman studios provides a range of highly charged and differentiated approaches to the architecture studio as a realm of critical work on forms and ideas. Each is distinguished by specific kinds of architectural issues, problems, sites, briefs, and a range of strategies for analysis, project development, and visualisation. Each, it will be shown, is structured and run to establish the architecture studio as a form of openended research. The Eisenman studios provide a particularly apt frame for wrapping an examination of his work surveyed in the proceeding chapters. This is due not only to the depth of studio data and documented student work available over multiple years, but also because they represent a range of approaches, scale, setting, and thematic-conceptual focus. Eisenman’s studios, I argue,

136  Teaching Displacement focus on potentials resulting from the confrontations of discipline-specific formal elements and problems internal to architecture with ideas and form generation strategies outside architecture, taking critical analysis as the first step and fundamental basis of the design process. There has been limited historical work on the role and theoretical reach of specific university studios, and ones based on multiple year surveys are even rarer. Exceptions include work on John Hejduk’s studio sequence at The Cooper Union School of Architecture1 and studies on, and documentation of, Colin Rowe’s graduate urban design studio at Cornell University.2 Recent scholarly programs have recognised this gap. Architecture School. Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America, edited by Joan Ockman, provides a foundational study and scholarly apparatus across the field.3 In this context, this chapter is intended to, if not inaugurate, at least provide focus and some key themes on this question that could well be subsequently developed in future research. The majority of secondary material on Eisenman has focused on his architectural design projects, the relation of his projects and writings to architectural theory, or the trajectory and place of the projects within the recent history of the discipline or Eisenman’s own practice. Other than brief references, there does not yet exist a body of secondary work on his approach to teaching. Robert Stern’s preface to the exhibition catalogue Palladio Virtuel is one exception. Stern alludes to, but does not develop, two aspects of Eisenman’s teaching. He claims that Eisenman sees building and teaching as one activity, and different from an emphasis on the contemporary, the ‘here and now’; Eisenman’s approach is distinguished by bringing the entire culture of architecture to the studio.4 This is evident in the Venice Project studio, as I show below. Stan Allan makes a brief reference to seminars given by Eisenman at Princeton in the early 2000s in his useful introduction to Ten Canonical Buildings 1950-2000. Allan does not, however, develop nor contextualize the structure and pedagogical and disciplinary stakes.5 I have selected these sets of studios – GSD, Venice Project studios I, II, III, and Aggregation Project – for pragmatic and strategic reasons. There is reasonable documentation of student work alongside teaching materials to allow comparative assessment and reflection. There is also, as I discuss and as Eisenman himself alludes to, an apparent swerve in the 2013 studio from previous approaches and I provide a preliminary articulation of the terms of that departure. Material on Eisenman’s studio teaching at the GSD is taken from a catalogue which accompanied an exhibition about the work and a monograph on a related project at the time. Material on the Yale School of Architecture studios as well as resulting student work has been primarily sourced from Retrospecta, the annual publication of student work and activities at the Yale School of Architecture. It has been supplemented by unpublished studio outlines which set out the key ambitions, provocations, and references

Teaching Displacement 137 for each year. Consistent with the limits of this book, here I endeavour to formulate the research questions and key terms of reference, trial the methodology, and outline findings based on the surveyed studios. Future research should refine the approach, expand on the primary source materials and case studies, and further develop and contextualise the findings opened in this analysis. As noted above, I am interested in exploring the potential of the studio as a research platform itself, as a form of critical and creative engagement with the discipline. The chapter also establishes preliminary evidence that the Eisenman studios can be read as contributing to architectural knowledge and thus function as valuable regimes of research alongside the writings and projects. Before fully moving to the analysis of specific teaching materials, let’s turn to Jeffrey Kipnis who provides a usefully tight formula of the direction and partial intent of Eisenman’s teaching. The formula or comment occurs in Kipnis’ larger discussion of Eisenman’s work from the late 1980s and early 1990s where he suggests that one can be led to suspend detailed discussion around this or that aspect and provenance of Eisenman’s work. In place of such findings, a consequence of all the efforts might be claimed to come down to a temperament shaped by what Kipnis calls ‘an obedient awe of form.’6 What is contained in the quip about form for Kipnis in the article deserves expansion for it is more than might be sensed. The temperament Eisenman promulgates, the form of thinking and acting architecturally, and the forms and open spaces shaped in projects are all more or less equally animate. And as Kipnis argues at the beginning of the essay, Eisenman’s work is part and parcel dedicated to and informed by his teaching. According to Kipnis, Eisenman formed and refined his approach to and skills at realising radically singular works. Kipnis locates at least part of that legacy in the teaching. Kipnis writes: ‘Eisenman honed his professional skills in the classrooms … Always controversial, he nevertheless emerged as one of a generation’s legendary teachers in the U.S. In each class, he could be heard to declare, “But that is architecture”, as he urged students into an obedient awe of form.’7

II In this section, I examine the topics, thematic ambitions, and protagonists in each of the select Eisenman-led studios under study. Student projects are referenced to illustrate responses to the kinds of architectural problems under consideration. II.i  GSD Studios In a multi-year studio, Eisenman’s Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) studios were organized around a series of specific problems and

138  Teaching Displacement conditions that proposed to engage ideas, compositional operations, and architectural-urbanistic forms in the broadest and most ambitious sense. Select materials from the Eisenman GSD studios were the object of a May 1986 exhibition and catalogue, Investigations in Architecture: Eisenman Studios at the GSD 1983-85.8 In each year’s studio, the city was taken as the conceptual object of study. A close reading of studio materials suggests three elements structure each year’s efforts: an exemplary architecturalurban situation to be interrogated; a concept, idea, or theoretical condition; and a limited set of transformative operations, their generative possibilities to be trialled on architectural forms and ideas. In certain years, use was introduced as a fourth element or term. These elements informed drawing and modelling techniques and together were intended to provoke a critical reappraisal of how architectural-urban form is generated and foster a reappraisal of the disciplinary problems therein revealed. The first GSD studio took the ideas of ideal, non-ideal, and double occupancy as opening concepts or conditions to be interrogated. Their nature and potential to inform contemporary design processes were to be integrated through work on two 16th century ideal city plans, that of Vespasiano Gonzaga’s Sabbioneta and Cataneo’s ideal city from I Primi Quattro Libri di Architettura. According to studio assistant Andrea Brown, ‘participants worked through a series of three-dimensional operations and procedural explorations on and in the town plans.’9 These operations created more studio material, which was then re-interrogated in the development of final submissions. Operations in three dimensions included ‘helical progression, serial movement, displacement, extrusion, and stacking.’ Other process devices trialled were ‘techniques of trace, erasure, graft, layering, scaffolding, marking, and delay.’10 The exemplary urban situation and base material in Eisenman’s second studio was Daniel Burnham’s plan for the Chicago Worlds Fair, the driving idea that of text, and the primary operation, grafting. There was, according to the studio assistant Marc Macker, a three-tiered ambition: to make architecture as text, to find a new topos of invention, and to find the means to record or express the new topos of invention.11 As recorded in a contemporary essay and in partial transcripts of studio talks, perhaps Eisenman’s overarching ambition at the time was to release the conditions of possibility for what he called a non-classical architecture, code within Eisenman’s rhetoric for a search for a non-anthropocentric mode of design.12 The terms of this search would align with the contemporary writing and publication by Eisenman of ‘The End of the Classical’ essay discussed above in the opening chapter. Student work, resulting from two different phases of studio interrogation, can be found in Investigations in Architecture. A seemingly rigid three-phase sequence of experiments characterise the third and final GSD studio. The founding proposition was to take on what Eisenman characterised as classical architecture’s centrism.13 This was to

Teaching Displacement 139 be done through the concepts of origin and presence. Scaling and overlap were primary studio operations, and the project was located in the environs of Chillicothe, Ohio. An early phase analysis drawing and the final phase response to the overlay of specific uses are seen in the multiple published works of students. An attempt to draw principles or conclusions with the further application, to generalize lessons out of Eisenman’s GSD studios, meets resistance. As suggested in Chapter 1, that is perhaps the first sign of an intentional ambiguity at work, one which embraces the contingent and the plural, constantly open to elisions and – to take Eisenman at his word – standing as a practice which resists single readings. That said, an accounting of certain ambitions, if not hypotheses, can be tried. The three-term structure – an idea or concept (origin, presence, text), a precedent architectural site or condition (Cataneo, Burnham), and transformative operations (scaling, grafting, extrusion) – is proposed to prompt studio members to try, via formal means, to locate possible architectural capacities in the space between these terms. Such tactics were adopted with an overarching ambition of interrogating form to idea relationships that depart from and thus challenge conventional models. To formulate it differently, in the Eisenman studio an unmediated confrontation of forms and ideas generates different and unknown relations which allow the new to appear amid a confluence across historic periods, places, and practices. This is one way to describe the research hypotheses then tested in studio projects by students: not so much a ‘what is’ the space between the three terms, but how might one formulate the architectural question such that something new, some further potential, or architectural possibility, is revealed. II.ii  Yale Venice Project Studios A multi-year studio developed and delivered at the Yale School of Architecture in 2009, 2010, and 2011, Eisenman’s Venice Project studios were organized around a series of specific problems and conditions that engaged ideas, devices, and forms in the broadest and most ambitious sense. A close reading of studio outlines reveals four key elements in each, swinging between those that might conventionally be thought of as either internal or external to the discipline.14 The character and trajectory of the studio are suggested in a review of these four elements: a pair of ideas, a polarity as can be seen in most but not all cases; a type-specific building, canonical project, or urban situation to be engaged critically; the provocation to explore the generative possibilities of a contemporary theoretical lens for working on architectural problems; and a set of formal and transformative operations. Also, a functional brief was always in place, though specifically to be treated in a perfunctory manner according to studio outlines so as not to

140  Teaching Displacement distract students from other issues. Together, these elements informed the orientation and method of the studio’s work. In terms of studio structure, at their most basic, the Eisenman studios were divided into an analysis phase (nominally four weeks, or one third of a 14-week semester) and a design or project phase (the remaining eight or nine weeks, or two thirds of a semester). The first Venice Project studio dealt with rhetoric and grammar, confronting the sixteenth-century proposals of Alvise Cornaro for Venice’s basin and their impact on Palladio, with Guy Debord’s notion of détournement – which we can translate as destabilisation – and Pier Vittorio Aureli’s reading of the city as an ‘archipelago of monuments.’15 Students were challenged to transform Cornaro’s ideas by means of different manifestations in the charged setting of a real and virtual Venice. The differences potentially uncovered were, according to studio summaries, intended to render the creative potential for architecture through conjectural proposals spurred by the opening provocation of, and architectural engagement with, rhetoric and grammar. The structure of the studio mimed the ambitions of Eisenman: conflating Cornaro with Palladio read through the lens of Debord’s idea of détournement and studying the impact in terms of method or technique interrogating the architectural problem as framed and concurrently generating a physical response following investigations of previous urban scale proposals for the city. It is worth citing a segment of Eisenman’s studio outline to get a sense of the intent: ‘This studio examines Cornaro’s proposal in light of Palladio, and examines the technique of overlay as not simply a mode of collage, but instead turning to Guy Debord’s concept of détournement.’16 Eisenman further clarifies the intent: ‘using a process of détournement [destabilisation], and beginning from Cornaro’s scheme we will attempt to keep his project somewhat intact… What that means and how it will be done is the subject of the studio.’ As a further explanation, he notes: ‘The result is to be manifest in tectonic means appropriate to the site’s history and today’s context.’17 Two student team projects can be taken as placeholders for studio outputs resulting from this provocation. Aidan Doyle and Palmyra Geraki’s proposal replaces the Rialto Bridge in a new analogical manifestation of Palladio’s design for the site. A rotated plinth is let loose in the canal and is stabilised provisionally, locked into place along organising axes and punctuated by a series of what the visiting studio jury characterised as fetish objects.18 Craig Chapple and Matthew Persinger’s approach is radically different in location and type, proposing a linear organisation that conceptually ties the mainland to the Stazione Termini. Three Palladian building forms are claimed to function as different threshold conditions as an echo of Cornaro’s proposal.19 In the second year of Eisenman’s Venice Project studio, the polarity announced in the studio outline is that of genius loci (spirit of place) versus

Teaching Displacement 141 zeitgeist (spirit of present time). The precedent and study site for the studio were Le Corbusier’s project for the Venice Hospital in Cannaregio, the latter taken as launching an engagement and transformation of the mat building typology. The place of the contemporary lens is occupied by Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, a condition in which simultaneously several perhaps incompatible places exist. 20 According to the studio outline, students were to explore this condition of simultaneity through a strategy of superposition. Eisenman’s challenge to the students, springing from a confrontation of these terms, was to ‘attempt to locate possible architectural capacities in the space between the evolving concepts of place [genius loci] and presentness [zeitgeist].’21 The reference to locating ‘possible capacities’ through the process of project development can be taken as shorthand for the core underlying studio ambition. One student project has been partially published and can be used to illustrate possible outcomes. Jonah Rowen and Daniel Markiewicz’s project for Venice Project II proposed a plinth that extends into the lagoon. Internal spaces are organised around a series of sunken courtyards and the project as a whole was suggested to critically invert organising principles of the unbuilt Venice Hospital while capturing the latent urban character of Cannaregio. 22 In Venice Project III, the polarity or idea pair is figure and typology. This pair itself is further complicated by a confrontation with, or overlay on, the notions of disegno and colore, a dialectical pair proposed to mark differences between the Florentine painting of Pontormo (on the side of disegno) from the Venetian painting of Giorgione (on the side of colore). A further complication is introduced with the addition of Aldo Rossi’s Gallaretese Housing and Cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena as formal-typological models to be transformed. Two project sites further echoed this conceptual doubling, with studio members working in pairs simultaneously on a site in Florence (the Piazza della Signoria) and one in Venice (the Arsenale basin). In the third year of the studio, Eisenman sets out the problem as continuing an investigation into ‘aspects of the architectural discipline.’23 It is worth citing the outline at length, in part to start to tease out the differences from previous years. According to teaching materials, the studio was intended to engage the problem of figure, or the fragmentation of figure, and typology in architecture by tracing an invented lineage through central and northern Italy, from Pontormo in Florence to Giorgione in Venice, from Aldo Rossi’s Gallaretese II housing in Milan to his Cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena. These precedents were postulated to serve as transformative or possibly ‘analogous’ projects in their Florentine and Venetian settings. The opposition to the Italian terms disegno and colore were proposed in addition to informing the technique and method of the studio’s work. 24 There is value in unpacking further this third and final studio ambition and its differences from the previous Venice Project studios. The most

142  Teaching Displacement striking difference in Venice Project III is that students were to develop parallel projects on sites of great diversity: the almost absent ground parasitically edging into but not occupying the Piazza Signoria in Florence versus the necessarily artificial island non-ground site of the Arsenal Basin. This duplication paralleled the duplication of protagonists to include painters and aesthetic debates around disegno versus colore. Process and final models and drawings of students Miroslava Brooks and Amy DeDonato mark possible transformations from generic to specific forms according, they argue, to the logic of partial figures as one illustration of the issues explored in the studio. 25 Drawing principles or conclusions with the further application, to generalise lessons out of the three Venice Project studios, is difficult. That said, an accounting of the ambitions, if not hypotheses, can be attempted and a close reading of the unit outlines yields some clues. Polarities, that of genius loci and zeitgeist, for instance, are proposed as hypothetical frameworks for a critical approach to the analysis and development of specific responses to sites which, in parallel, prompt transformations of design principles in canonical projects from architecture’s past or more generic typologies (mat, slab, tower). Eisenman deploys all these as one means to encourage studio members to try via formal means to locate possible critical architectural capacities in the space between the various terms. Eisenman hints at such ambition in the second year’s studio outline where he discusses the investigation of the possibilities of grammar and rhetoric as operative linguistic devices in architecture. 26 This is one way to formulate the research problem then tested in the student projects: not so much a ‘what is’ the space between the two terms of the polarity, but how might one formulate the architectural question of the two such that something new is revealed. This generative nature of the Venice Project studios, this opening of possible futures or capacities in architecture, is one way to characterise the specific research problem interrogated by Eisenman. I return to this in the concluding section of the chapter. II.iii  Aggregation Project Studio Eisenman himself characterises the Aggregation Project studio as a departure from previous studios. Which are the important or distinguishing deviations? Different from Venice, the studio is not announced as a multiyear exploration. Rather, there appears to be some current urgency that in part prompted the specific orientation and elements: a specific debate that Eisenman wanted to engage in via the studio. The studio’s contemporaneity is thus distinctive as compared to the Venice Project studios which individually considered historical and virtual pasts – Cornaro’s 16th century plan for the laguna; Le Corbusier’s unbuilt Venice Hospital – and what might be characterised as general conditions (figure versus ground; genius loci versus

Teaching Displacement 143 zeitgeist). In the aggregation studio, it is a digital practice of parametric or algorithmic-based design that is at stake. Run in the Fall 2013 semester, and taking a site in Rome as the study area, the Aggregation Project studio charge was ‘to re-define the term – aggregation – as a critique of the digital, which has become synonymous with homogeneous, continuous space.’27 More specifically, students were asked to develop architectural responses to the question of a kind of heterogeneity that, following Jeffrey Kipnis, offers another form-space model that differs from the parametric and results in a singular as opposed to continuous, extensive space. The process for approaching the question along two poles was suggested in the studio outline. One pole was framed around ideas of ground, or questions of the ground as a datum, in part complicated by locating the studio brief in Rome on a site charged with history: the Piazza del Cinquecento located between the Stazioni Termini and the Baths of Diocletian. The second process pole according to the studio brief was to be a strategy of three overlapping typologies: mat, slab, and tower. The used program to be accommodated was a 20,000 square meter Library of Rome. Two different student team solutions are reproduced in that year’s Retrospecta and suggest the potential range of outcomes. Brandon Hall and Evan Wiskup proposed extensions of the Stazioni Termini slabs to bracket the proposed Library spaces which in turn create a blurred new ground that extends into the arrival hall of the Stazioni. 28 Taking a different tactic, Elisa Iturbe and Brittany Utting propose a ‘stich’: a narrow building space that alternately compresses and releases as it runs between and binds together the Baths and the Stazioni. 29

III In order to start to illustrate the necessary role and relevance of Eisenman’s teaching as a compliment to the writing and projects as a form of critical experimentation that advances architectural knowledge, specific examples of his studio teaching have been briefly surveyed. What, if anything, do they share? Are there lessons on the workings and reach of the university architecture studio as a realm for research one could extend out to or apply elsewhere? What are the important differences? What future lines of inquiry should be followed to further test the opening proposition that studio-based research contributes to architectural thinking and that work in the studio at its most creative emerges from a critical engagement with something outside? The Eisenman studios, to state the most basic, can be read as investigations of specific architectural problems, whether work on architectural precedents, form generation strategies, the traditional versus modern city dialectic, or the design process itself and more generally as the aim of the pedagogic enterprise.

144  Teaching Displacement Looking more pointedly, four characteristics seem to be in common. First, there is an emphasis on precedent, whether an architectural problem to be taken on again or as a formal solution to be collaged onto a specific project site in a spirit of conjecture. The second is repetition: studio problems are repeated over several years with variations and refinements. In the case of Eisenman’s Venice Project studios, a framework is adopted and replacement terms (of concept couple, analytic component, site) are introduced. So duration, variation, and the implication of a shared studio culture are all implied and used. Third, there is an explicit effort to remain open to the new, and to renewal generally. In the case of Aggregation Project studio, this occurs perhaps at the level of contemporary thought. Or in Venice Project studio I, it is the force of the specific city to reshape thinking and forms that is the vehicle for renewal. Fourth, the functional brief or space program is downplayed or even absent. Eisenman downplays function over a privileging of other architectural issues and conditions, whether a concept (group in the Aggregation Project) or an eclectic and coherent shape or form. There is a fifth aspect, related to transmission and reflection: the process and outcomes are documented. Publication by Yale School of Architecture in annual issues of Retrospecta has ensured the partial documentation of student projects and in certain years highlights from the final jury. This has allowed the ideas, form capacities, and contemporary discipline responses made in public studio juries to further resonate. Table 7.1 charts key elements of each studio as a way to start to map the range of architectural issues at stake in the four studios and highlight differences. The differences are both evident and subtle. The scale of investigation is the most visible. The variations run from multi block (Cannaregio, Piazza del Cinquecento) to infill (Florence). The attitude toward context, site, and ground varies as does the underlying assumption about autonomy. At a different scale, and in a different realm, the challenge of deploying a challenge to figure/field relationships in favour of figure-figure conditions passes through a filter, or is indexed against, proto cubistic composition devices not only in plan but spatially. In so doing, these many efforts combine in an endeavour to realize an and-and as distinct from an either/or condition. Another way to distinguish the difference in approaches, and to clarify the question of their critical contribution to the discipline, is to endeavour to formulate the research problem the studios could be said to be treating. The research problem in Eisenman’s Venice Project studios might be characterized as form research using operative frameworks delimited by aspects formed in binary couples (rhetoric/grammar, genius loci/zeitgeist, figure/ typology), used in turn to read projects and places from the history of the discipline. These include the protagonists of Rossi’s Gallaretese Housing, Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital, and Palladio’s Rialto Bridge. It is a parallel and self-complicating dialectic with the context in multiple aspects

Teaching Displacement 145 Table 7.1  Matrix of terms in four of Peter Eisenman’s advanced architecture studios Venice Project studio I Polarity

Venice Project Venice Project studio II studio III

Aggregation Project studio

Place (genius loci) versus the spirit of the time (zeitgeist)

Figure versus Aggregation partial figure; versus digital; disegno versus noncolore homogeneous versus homogeneous Protagonists: Alvise Cornaro Le Corbusier’s Aldo Rossi’s Patrick inside the Venice Gallaretese II Schumacher; discipline Hospital Housing and Jeffrey Kipnis’s San Cataldo idea of Cemetery heterogeneity Protagonists: Guy Debord Michel Paintings of outside the and the idea of Foucault’s Pontormo discipline detournement idea of (Florence) (destabilisation) heterotopic versus paintings space of Giorgione (Venice) Type Mat Tower, slab, mat Setting Venice Cannaregio, Piazza della Piazza del Venice Signoria, Cinquecento, Florence; Rome Arsenale Basin, Venice Use brief Cornaro’s Regional Residential (70 Library of Rome scheme varied Centre for apartments, (20,000 m2) the Veneto 90,000 gsf)

(historical, real, contemporary) and internal conditions of any architecture. Eisenman appears, in other words, less to interrogate specific conditions than to stage the differences between the synthetic activities of the design process itself and the discipline and practice of architecture as that which is beyond the functional and iconographic facets of building design.30 To try another formulation, Eisenman’s field of inquiry thus can be seen to be simultaneously context based – whether the Arsenal Basin in Venice or the Piazza Signoria in Florence – and deeply engaged with architecture’s future by a parallel confrontation with architecture’s past (its insides) and an openness to the potential in concepts and ideas from other realms. The stakes can also be claimed to be based on a trajectory or context of ideas and forms, whether Cornaro’s bacino, Rossi’s Milan, or Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital. It is deeply engaged with architecture’s future by a parallel confrontation with architecture’s past and an openness to the potential in concepts and ideas from other realms, whether the grammar/rhetoric polarity, Michel Foucault’s heterotopia, or Debord’s détournement.

146  Teaching Displacement To that extent, and in their differences, all four studios might be said to share an optimism about the future that is so intense that it is the present, in the end, that is approached. It is an endlessly reinvented present, rendered by individual imagination, the city, and the art of conceiving a building. A different general summation of the historical project in Eisenman can be teased out of a more recent essay. Published in 2005 in an issue of Perspecta devoted to fame, and in the course of addressing the Mephistophelian question of the cost of fame, Eisenman provides further clues to the nature of his work on history. The comments emerge around his reflection on the limits of teaching. What, asks Eisenman, are the conditions of possibility for teaching architectural ideas? Eisenman believes that only certain architectural projects have the necessary ‘disciplinary autonomy’ for them to work as instruments of teaching.31 To take one example, Borromini’s projects according to Eisenman manifest a condition of disciplinary autonomy, one not present in the work of Bernini. This condition can be seen in Borromini’s column/wall ambiguities. This state of autonomy allows Eisenman to teach Borromini and in so doing, he argues, to undertake a critical reading of problems inside the discipline. From this, we can attempt to formulate, in the context of the ideas discussed in section two of this chapter, a formula of Eisenman’s relation to historical phenomena. The texts mark various approaches to what he describes as a critical history of architecture, one linked to the autonomy of the discipline.32 Taken in turn, the two key characteristics – that of critical history and that of autonomy – provide a useful summary of assumptions underlying the historical project. Eisenman’s decades-long efforts have contributed to establishing the conditions of possibility for such a history and give us several models of how such a critical history might function, which problems might surface within the discipline (such as column/wall oscillations), and what kinds of drawings and models might be best suited to their illustration. This suggestion pivots back to the opening chapter and the proposal of work on architecture’s conditions of possibility. This is also to return to the idea of open-ended theory that concludes The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture, Eisenman’s PhD. There is some merit in returning at this stage to the 1963 thesis not only on grounds of method and intent but in terms of the content of historical analysis as a working on architecture’s past. If we return to the beginning, we get a further sense of the role of Eisenman’s approach to history, of his attitude towards ‘history as an analytical and theoretical medium, rather than as a descriptive discipline.’33 Additional research is needed to further examine the beginning assumptions and refine the research questions opened here. Immediate lines of inquiry might expand the case studies to include Eisenman’s mid 1980s city studio run over three years at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Teaching Displacement 147 In addition, this narrow survey of his studio teaching would be invigorated if considered within the context of Eisenman’s larger office practice and historical-theoretical projects. Such a move would reveal compounding influences between their various activities and provide further evidence of the university studio as a site of knowledge production, to return to the open questions. In addition, systematic consideration of the range of architecturalurbanistic problems, their spatial conditions, and formal characteristics should be attempted, other university programs should be examined in architecture and other studio-based disciplines, and additional close reading of studio materials from Eisenman undertaken to further expand the opening propositions. The Eisenman studios can be seen as efforts to interrogate architecture, and its possibilities through the university studio offered a field of constant renewal. In this sense, studio work does not lead to conclusions. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that conclusions are endlessly deferred except in a provisional sense, the activities of the university studio creating conditions of possibility for new architectural categories, conditions, forms, and ideas to emerge and which resist specifically returning – at least for Eisenman – to a part to whole bias in favour of an endlessly open and positively ambiguous mode of thought and practice characterised by such notions as partial figuration and a new idea of aggregation. They thus provide only provisional models and strategies for responding to this paper’s opening questions and the ambition of a more nuanced mode of design research through the university studio project. This inconclusive nature of studio research and this study of Eisenman’s mid-career work can be given a provisional closing word by Henry Cobb, one that suggests the potential for all studio-based disciplines. At the time, Cobb was Chair of Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, and he wrote the introduction to the catalogue that resulted from that multi-year studio led by Eisenman in those same years, which is discussed in the opening of this chapter. In the university studio, Cobb notes, ‘conclusive results are scarcely to be expected… what emerges is an array of new questions together with new strategies for pursuing them. To me this seems an entirely appropriate outcome for an experiment in architecture …’34 Little more can be said of the array of ideas and devices considered across the years in review.

Notes 1 On John Hejduk’s Cooper Union studios, key published references include: Ulrich Franzen, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, and Kim Shkapich, eds., Education of an Architect: A Point of View, The Cooper Union School of Art & Architecture (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1999), original version published in 1971. John Hejduk, Elizabeth Diller, D Lewis, and Kim Shkapich, eds., Education of an Architect (New York, Rizzoli, 1988).

148  Teaching Displacement 2 On Colin Rowe’s studio teaching at Cornell University, key sources and commentary include: Steven Hurtt, “Conjectures on Urban Form. The Cornell Urban Design Studio 1963-1982,” The Cornell Journal of Architecture 2 (1982): 54–78. David Blake Middleton, “Studio Projects,” The Cornell Journal of Architecture 2 (1982): 78–141. Colin Rowe and David Blake Middleton, “Cornell Studio Projects and Theses,” in Colin Rowe, As I Was Saying Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays. Volume 3 Urbanistics, ed. Alexander Caragonne (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996), 5–84. 3 Joan Ockman, ed., Architecture School. Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2012). 4 Robert Stern, “Preface,” in Palladio Virtuel, pamphlet to accompany an exhibition of the same name, 20 August–27 October 2012, exhibition curators Peter Eisenman with Matt Roman (New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2012), s.p. 5 Stan Allen, “Eisenman’s Canon: A Counter-Memory of the Modern,” in Ten Canonical Buildings 1950-2000, Peter Eisenman (New York, Rizzoli, 2002), 9. 6 Jeffrey Kipnis, “P-Tr’s Progress,” El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997): 36. 7 Kipnis, “P-Tr’s Progress,” 36. 8 Investigations in Architecture. Eisenman Studios at the GSD 1983-85, eds. Jonathan Jova Marvel and Margaret Reeve (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1986). 9 Andrea Brown, “In Caesura,” in Investigations in Architecture. Eisenman Studios at the GSD 1983-85, eds. Jonathan Jova Marvel and Margaret Reeve (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1986), 14 10 Brown, “In Caesura,” 15. 11 Marc Hacker, “With a Certain Laughter and Dance,” in Investigations in Architecture. Eisenman Studios at the GSD 1983-85, eds. Jonathan Jova Marvel and Margaret Reeve (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1986), 27. 12 Hacker, “With a Certain Laughter and Dance,” 32. 13 Jeffrey Kipnis, “Star Wars III: The Battle at the Center of the Universe,” in Investigations in Architecture. Eisenman Studios at the GSD 1983-85, eds. Jonathan Jova Marvel and Margaret Reeve (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1986), 43. 14 Peter Eisenman and Michael Wang, “Unit 1104a. Venice Project I - Alvise Cornaro and the Venetian Laguna,” Yale School of Architecture, Fall 2009, unpublished architecture studio outline. Peter Eisenman and Matthew Roman, “Unit 1106a. Venice Project II - Le Corbusier and the Visionary’s Venice,” Yale School of Architecture, Fall 2010, unpublished architecture studio outline. Peter Eisenman and Matthew Roman, “Unit 1104a. Venice Project III - Figure/Disfigure,” Yale School of Architecture, Fall 2011, unpublished architecture studio outline. Studio outlines were publicly available on the Yale School of Architecture website at the time of delivery. Though unpublished, summary details for each of the three Venice Project studios can be found in respective issues of Retrospecta, an annual journal of student work and activities of the Yale School of Architecture, and separately referenced below. Studio outlines consistently list Eisenman and one other person as instructors, without distinguishing roles. The names of both studio instructors are listed above and in the chapter bibliography. Without wishing to diminish the contributions of the other studio instructor in any one semester, for the purposes of simplicity and acknowledging his originating role, only Eisenman is specifically named in the body of the text.

Teaching Displacement 149 15 Eisenman and Wang, “Venice Project I”, unpublished studio outline. The notion of détournement is defined by Guy Debord in his Society of the Spectacle as ‘the antithesis of quotation’. See” Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994). According to the studio outline, one aim of the studio was to transcribe the idea of détournement into an architectural device of ‘overlay,’ one which is proposed to differ from, or is more than, a simple technique of montage or collage. 16 “Venice Project I: 1104a Advanced Studio,” in Retrospecta 2009-2010, eds. Con Vu Bui, Christos C. Bolos, Justin Trigg and Diana Nee (New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2010): 34. 17 Eisenman and Wang, “Unit 1104a. Venice Project I,” unpublished studio outline. 18 “Venice Project I,” 34, 35. 19 “Venice Project I,” 36. 20 “Venice Project II: Le Corbusier and the Visionary’s Venice. 1106A – Peter Eisenman, Venice, Italy,” in Retrospecta 2010-2011, eds. Amy Kessler, Edward Hsu and Yasemin Tarhan (New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2011), 44–45. See also the unpublished studio outline. 21 “Venice Project II,” 44. 22 “Venice Project II,” 44, 45. 23 Eisenman and Roman, “Unit 1104a. Venice Project III,” unpublished studio outline. 24 Eisenman and Roman, “Unit 1106a. Venice Project II,” unpublished studio outline. The polarity disegno, drawing or design more generally with an emphasis on line as the basis of composition, and colore, or colouring with an implied reliance on patches of colour or shape as the beginning, has a long tradition and is typically formulated in art historical contexts as geographically differentiated. Artists from Renaissance Florence are often placed on the side of disegno, Venetian artists of the same period on the side of colore. 25 “[Venice Project III] 1104A Advanced Design Studio. Peter Eisenman with Matt Roman,” in Retrospecta 2011-2012, eds. Tyler Collins, Leeland McPhail and Evan Wiskup (New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2012), 47–48, 137–138. See also the unpublished studio outline. 26 Eisenman and Wang, “Unit 1104a. Venice Project I,” unpublished studio outline, partially reproduced in “Venice Project I,” 35. 27 “A Project of Aggregation. Peter Eisenman,” in Retrospecta 2013-2014 37, eds. Dov Feinmesser, Jenny Kim and Andrew Sternad (New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2014), 102. See also: Peter Eisenman and Amy DeDonato, “Unit 1105a. A Project of Aggregation,” Yale School of Architecture, Fall 2013, unpublished studio outline. 28 “A Project of Aggregation,” 103. 29 “A Project of Aggregation,” 104. 30 Eisenman circles around these distinctions in the studio outline for the final Venice Project studio. 31 Peter Eisenman, “Fame as the Avatar of History,” Perspecta 37 (2005), 165. 32 Eisenman, “Fame as the Avatar of History,”171. 33 Eisenman, “The Big Little Magazine: Perspecta 12 and the Future of the Architectural Past,” Architectural Forum 131 (1969): 74. See also Eisenman, The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture (Baden: Lars Müller Publishers, 2018, a facsimile edition of the 1963 PhD dissertation at the University of Cambridge), 343. 34 Henry N. Cobb, “Foreword,” in Investigations in Architecture. Eisenman Studios at the GSD 1983-85, edited by Jonathan Jova Marvel and Margaret Reeve (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1986), 5.

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Bibliography Allen, Stan. “Eisenman’s Canon: A Counter-Memory of the Modern.” In Ten Canonical Buildings 1950-2000, edited by Peter Eisenman, 9–12. New York: Rizzoli, 2002. Brown, Andrea. “In Caesura.” In Investigations in Architecture. Eisenman Studios at the GSD 1983-85, edited by Jonathan Jova Marvel and Margaret Reeve, 14–25. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1986. Cobb, Henry N. “Foreword.” In Investigations in Architecture. Eisenman Studios at the GSD 1983-85, edited by Jonathan Jova Marvel and Margaret Reeve, 5. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1986. Eisenman, Peter. “The Big Little Magazine: Perspecta 12 and the Future of the Architectural Past.” Architectural Forum 131 (1969): 74–75, 104. Eisenman, Peter. “The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, the End of the End.” Perspecta 21 (1984): 154–173. Eisenman, Peter. “Fame as the Avatar of History.” Perspecta 37 (2005): 164–171. Eisenman, Peter. The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture. Baden: Lars Muller Publishers, 2018, a facsimile edition of the 1963 PhD dissertation at the University of Cambridge. Eisenman, Peter. “The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Difference.” Harvard Architecture Review 3 (1983): 65–82. Eisenman, Peter, 2007. “Urgency Part 2”. Lecture, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, 8 June 2007. Accessed 04-02-2022, https://www.cca. qc.ca/en/events/2681/urgency-2007-rem-koolhaas-and-peter-eisenman Eisenman, Peter and Michael Wang, instructors. “Unit 1104a, Fall 2009. Venice Project I - Alvise Cornaro and the Venetian Laguna.” Unpublished advanced architecture studio outline. New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2009. Published on the Yale School of Architecture website at the time of delivery, collection of the Author. Eisenman, Peter and Matthew Roman, instructors. “Unit 1106a, Fall 2010. Venice Project II - Le Corbusier and the Visionary’s Venice.” Unpublished advanced architecture studio outline. New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2010. Published on the Yale School of Architecture website at the time of delivery, collection of the Author. Eisenman, Peter and Matthew Roman, instructors. “Unit 1104a, Fall 2011. Venice Project III - Figure/Disfigure.” Unpublished advanced architecture studio outline. New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2011. Published on the Yale School of Architecture website at the time of delivery, collection of the Author. Eisenman, Peter and Amy DeDonato, instructors. “Unit 1105a, Fall 2013. A Project of Aggregation.” Unpublished advanced architecture studio outline. New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2013. Published on the Yale School of Architecture website at the time of delivery, collection of the Author. Hacker, Marc. 1986. “With a Certain Laughter and Dance.” In Investigations in Architecture. Eisenman Studios at the GSD 1983-85, edited by Jonathan Jova Marvel and Margaret Reeve, 27–41. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1986. Hurtt, Steven. “Conjectures on Urban Form. The Cornell Urban Design Studio 1963-1982.” The Cornell Journal of Architecture 2 (1982): 54–78. Kipnis, Jeffrey. “P-Tr’s Progress.” El Croquis Peter Eisenman 1990-1997 83 (1997): 36–49.

Teaching Displacement 151 Kipnis, Jeffrey. “Star Wars III: The Battle at the Center of the Universe.” In Investigations in Architecture. Eisenman Studios at the GSD 1983-85, edited by Jonathan Jova Marvel and Margaret Reeve, 42–67. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1986. Marvel, Jonathan Jova and Margaret Reeve, eds. Investigations in Architecture: Eisenman Studios at the GSD 1983-85. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 1986. Middleton, D. B. “The Combining of the Traditional City and the Modern City.” Lotus International 27 (1982): 47–62. Joan, Ockman, ed. Architecture School. Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2012. Rowe, Colin. “The Present Urban Predicament.” The Architectural Association Quarterly 12, no. 4 (1979): 40–63. Rowe, Colin. “Roma Interrotta.” In As I Was Saying. Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays, Volume Three Urbanistics, edited by Alexander Caragonne, 127–153. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996. Rowe, Colin and Fred Koetter. Collage City. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1978. Rowe, Colin. and D. B. Middleton. “Cornell Studio Projects and Theses.” In As I Was Saying. Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays, Volume Three Urbanistics, edited by Alexander Caragonne, 5–84. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1996. “A Project of Aggregation. Peter Eisenman.” In Retrospecta 37 2013-2014, edited by Dov Feinmesser, Jenny Kim and Andrew Sternad, 102–104. New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2014. Stern, Robert. “Preface.” In Palladio Virtuel, pamphlet to accompany the exhibition of the same name, 20 August–27 October 2012, exhibition curators Peter Eisenman with Matt Roman, s.p. New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2012. “Venice Project I: 1104a Advanced Studio.” In Retrospecta 2009-2010, edited by Con Vu Bui, Christos C. Bolos, Justin Trigg and Diana Nee, 34–37. New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2010. “Venice Project II: Le Corbusier and the Visionary’s Venice. 1106A – Peter Eisenman, Venice, Italy.” In Retrospecta 2010-2011, edited by Amy Kessler, Edward Hsu and Yasemin Tarhan, 44–45. New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2011. “[Venice Project III:] 1104A Advanced Design Studio. Peter Eisenman With Matt Roman.” In Retrospecta 2011-2012, edited by Tyler Collins, Leeland McPhail and Evan Wiskup, 47-48, 137–138. New Haven: Yale School of Architecture, 2012.

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” refer to notes; and page numbers in Bold refer to tables; and page numbers in italics refer to figures. Aggregation Project studio 135, 142–143 Allen, Stan 40–41, 53n4, 129, 136, 148n5 Alteka Office Building 121 Alvise Cornaro 140 ambiguity 43, 45, 47, 50, 117, 139 Anamnesis 69 Ando, Tadao 2, 32, 65, 70n23, 70n24, 127 Anybody (Bueno Aires) 57 Anyhow (Rotterdam) 58 Anymore (Paris) 58 Anyone (Los Angeles) 33, 57 Anyplace (Montréal) 57 Anything (New York) 58 Anytime conference 57, 58, 60, 63, 67 Anyway (Barcelona) 57 Anywhere conference 57, 116 Anywise (Seoul) 57 ‘Architecture and the Problem of the Rhetorical Figure’ 61, 98 ‘Architecture as a Second Language: The Texts of Between’ 63 The Architecture of the City 12, 61, 62 Architecture School 136 Aronoff Center for Design 1, 97, 114 Aronoff Center for Design and Art 1, 113, 129 Art of a new ‘system of ornament 97 Atocha 123 Hotel 115, 118, 121–122, 122, 129 A+U (Architecture and Urbanism) 2, 65, 66 Aureli, Pier Vittorio 40, 41, 53n7, 53n8, 107, 140 axonometric drawings 45

bacino 145 Balfour, Alan 84, 89, 90, 93n24, 93n35, 93n37 Banff Session ‘84 12 Banyoles Olympic Hotel 2, 58, 65, 66, 103, 103–104, 104, 108, 108 Barry’s Houses of Parliament 46 Bédard, Jean-François 84, 89, 92n6, 92n22 Belogolovsky, Vladimir 24 Berlin IBA Housing 76 Berry, Charles 6 ‘The Big Little Magazine: Perspecta 12 50 Biocenter 26, 30, 96, 98, 102, 105, 107 Blurred Zones 98 Bofill, Ricardo 12 Bois, Yve-Alain 83, 84, 88, 90, 92n20, 93n33, 93n38 Breslin, Lynne 95 Brooks, Miroslava 142 Brown, Andrea 148n9, 148n10 Bruno, Giordano 77 Burnham, Daniel 138 Ca d’Oro 47 California State University 84, 86 Campo Marzio 107 Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) 69, 100, 121, 123, 126 Cannaregio 2, 76–80, 78, 83–84, 86–91, 97, 102–103, 107, 141, 144 Cannaregio Town Square project 91, 102 Carnegie Mellon Research Institute 23, 24, 26, 29, 99

Index 153 Casabella 43 Casa del Fascio 41–43, 45, 47, 49 Casa Giuliani-Frigerio 44, 47 Cemetery of San Cataldo 141 Center for the Arts project for Emory University 60 Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut 28 Chapple, Craig 140 Chicago Worlds Fair 138 ‘The Church of the Year 2000’ 129 ‘The City as Memory and Immanence’ 116, 118, 119 City of Culture of Galicia 91, 96 city of Venice 77 Civilisation and its Discontents 61 Cobb, Henry 7, 8, 17n47, 69, 71n38, 71n39, 97–98, 109n12, 114, 129, 147, 149n34 College of Design Architecture Art and Planning project 65 Columbus Convention Center 29 conception of time 65 conditions of possibility 3, 6, 10, 13, 39, 50, 51, 90, 117–120, 138, 146, 147 Conjectural reconstructions 42 Cornaro, Alvise 140, 142, 145 Damisch, Hubert 63, 64, 66–67, 70n20 Davidson, Cynthia 115, 130n9 ‘Death of a Hermeneutic Phantom’ 26 Debord, Guy 140, 145 decomposition and timelessness: conditions of a not-classical architecture 8–10; Fin d’Ou T Hou S project 10–12; techniques of form finding 7–8; The Transcripts 12–13 Deconstruction is/in America 61 DeDonato, Amy 142 Deleuze, Gilles 38, 118 Derrida, Jacque 38, 63, 70n19 détournement. 145 Diagram Diaries 52, 76, 79, 86 disjunction 48 displacement 6, 15, 23, 34, 49, 58, 62, 65, 66, 89, 99, 102–105, 115, 118, 138 Domus 25 Doyle, Aidan 140 Düsseldorf Harbour 105 The Edge of Between 30 ‘Editor’s Introduction: The Houses of Memory: The Texts of Analogue’ 61 Eisenman Architects: Selected and Current Works 101

‘Eisenman 80: Architecture and Resistance’ 96 Eisenman, Peter D. 1–15, 16n2, 16n3, 16n5–16n10, 16n12, 16n14–n19, 16n22, 17n23, 17n25–n32, 17n34–n42, 17n48, 17n50, 21, 23–34, 34n1–n5, 35n17–n25, 35n30, 36n34, 38–53, 53n1–n3, 53n9, 54n11–n39, 54n41, 54n42, 54n44–n46, 54n47–n49, 54n51–n62, 57–69, 70n3–n7, 70n9–n15, 70n17, 70n18, 71n35, 73, 75–77, 78, 79–80, 81, 82, 82–84, 85, 86–91, 92n1, 92n3–n5, 92n7, 92n8, 92n10, 92n12–n17, 92n19, 92n21, 93n23, 93n25–n31, 93n34, 93n39, 93n41, 95–107, 100, 104, 108, 108n2–n4, 109n6–n9, 109n16, 109n18–n27, 110n30–n33, 110n35, 110n36, 110n44, 110n46, 113–121, 122, 123, 124–127, 125, 127, 128, 130n1–n3, 130n12–n18, 130n20–n31, 130n39, 134–147, 148n14, 149n15, 149n17, 149n23, 149n24, 149n26, 149n31–n33 ‘Eisenman’s Machine of Infinite Resistance’ 26 Emory Center for the Arts 96, 108 ‘The End of the Classical’ 3, 7–9, 60, 62, 69, 98, 138 ‘En Terror Firma’ 23, 24, 26, 30 ‘En Terror Firma: In Trails of Grotextes’ 99 Eros and Other Errors 80 Evans, Robin 10, 11, 17n43–n46, 17n49 event 15, 32, 33, 69, 84, 86, 90, 113–131; aspects of 128; comparison of 129; notion of event 116; Presentness 119; unfolding events 117–119 ‘Even the Villa Schwob’ 67 excavation 76, 79, 80, 83, 84, 88, 97, 135 Fabrica Fino 46 ‘Fame as the Avatar of History.’ 51 Feinmesser, Dov 149n27 figuration 1, 90, 91, 95–98, 100, 102–107, 118, 121, 135, 147 figure 2, 3, 5, 11, 15, 26, 27, 29, 45–49, 53, 61, 77, 79, 80, 83, 84, 86–88, 90, 91, 95–108, 114, 117–119, 121, 125, 126, 129, 141, 142, 144 Fin D’Ou T Hou S 1, 10–12, 31 Firehouse for Engine Company 233 25

154  Index folding 64, 79, 87 Folding in Time: The Singularity of Rebstock 113 ‘The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture’ 39, 41, 43, 45, 52, 146 Forster, Kurt W. 2, 31, 32, 35n28, 64, 70n21, 70n22, 110n43, 114, 130n6 Foscarini 46, 47 Foucault, Michel 145 Frampton, Kenneth 4–7, 10, 12, 13, 25, 27, 34n6, 34n7, 35n15, 35n16 Frankfurt Biocenter 30 Freud, Sigmund 61, 97 ‘From Object to Relationship’ 39, 41, 43–45 ‘From Object to Relationship II’ 43 ‘The Futility’ essay 60 ‘The Futility of Objects’ 6–8, 14, 27, 31, 41, 49 ‘The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Difference’ 5, 39, 60 Future of the Architectural Past 50 Gallaretese Housing 141 Geraki, Palmyra 140 Giuliani-Frigerio 45, 46, 49, 53 Giuseppe Terragni 39, 41–44, 46, 49, 52 Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques 39, 41 Gold Rush 86 Gonzaga, Vespasiano 138 Graafland, Arie 26, 35n12 Graduate School of Design (GSD) studios 137–139 Greater Columbus Convention Center 120 Grosz, Elizabeth 66, 71n27 ground manipulations 89, 90 Guardiola House 1, 91 Hacker, Marc 148n11, 148n12 Hadid, Zaha 57, 58, 63, 66–68, 70n2, 71n29–n31 Hadrian’s Villa 46 Hall, Brandon 143 Harvard Graduate School of Design 60, 97, 107, 135, 137, 138, 146, 147 Haverkamp, Anselm 61, 70n8 Hays, K. Michael 79, 92n9, 92n18, 93n32, 117, 129, 130n19 Hejduk, John 77, 147n1 Histories of the Immediate Present 38

history 3–10, 13, 15, 30, 34, 38–55, 58–62, 64, 66, 69, 86, 91, 102, 105, 113, 115, 123, 128, 136, 140, 143, 144, 146; common denominators 51–53; critical history and autonomy 51; decomposition 45–47; formal analysis 41–43; historical writings 52; relationships 43–45; shifts and swerves 49–50; Terragni Redux 48–49 Hoesli, Bernard 77 Hong Kong Peak project (1982–1983) 68 House El Even Odd 1, 91 House I 1, 79 House of Memory: Texts of Analogue, 12, 62 House series 2 the Houses of Parliament 46 House VI 28 House X 91 House X, Voice 2 30 IBA Social Housing 2, 11, 66 Immendorff, Haus 105 Infantile, Asilo 41–43 Inside Out 52 International Bauausstellung IBA Checkpoint Charlie Housing project 97 International Seminary of Design in the Area of Cannaregio-West 73 interstitial 15, 117, 128 ‘The Interstitial Figure’ 129 Investigations in Architecture: Eisenman Studios at the GSD 138 I Primi Quattro Libri di Architettura 138 Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia 77 Iturbe, Elisa 143 Jameson, Frederic 38, 62, 70n16 Johnson, Philip 97–98, 109n13–n15, 129 Jones, Edward 12 J.W. Goethe University 26 Kansai International Airport 123 Kim, Jenny 149n27 Kipnis, Jeffrey 2, 9, 14, 16n5, 17n33, 18n57, 25, 31–32, 34n8–n10, 35n26, 35n27, 41, 54n11, 63, 66, 71n25, 71n26, 103, 107, 110n34, 120, 129, 130n41, 130n42, 137, 143, 148n6, 148n7, 148n13 ‘K Nowhere To Fold’ 113

Index 155 Koolhaas, Rem 103, 106, 110n45 Korean National Museum 30 Krauss, Rosalind 26, 35n11, 38 Kwinter, Sanford 1, 14, 15n1, 18n58, 120, 129, 130n33 L’architecture d’aujourd’hui 1 L’Architettura della citta 61 La Tourette Monastery 28, 119 La Villette 76 Le Corbusier 28, 79, 141, 142, 144, 145 Leicester Engineering Building 40 Levrat, Frédéric 1 Long Beach Museum 27, 76, 101 Loos, Adolph 97 Lynn, Greg 68, 69, 71n35, 80, 91, 92n11, 93n40, 102 Macker, Marc 138 Markiewicz, Daniel 141 Marvel, Jonathan Jova 148n8 Mathias, Oswald 106 matrix of terms 145 memory 12, 33, 34, 57, 59–62, 64, 66, 68, 69, 77, 86, 96, 97, 102, 108, 128 Michelangelo of San Lorenzo 47 Miralles, Enric 13, 14, 18n55, 18n56 Monastery of Sainte-Marie de la Tourette 28 Mondrian of Victory Boogie Woogie 47 Moneo, Rafael 93n36 Moneo, Raphael 7, 8, 17n24, 40, 41, 53n5, 53n6, 76, 77, 89, 92n2, 101–102, 110n29, 120, 129, 130n32, 130n40 Monte Paschi Bank Competition 26, 88 Morris, Robert 33 Motian, Paul 17n54 Moving Arrows 80, 83 Muschamp, Hubert 115, 130n10, 130n11 Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar 68 Museum of Modern Art 98 New National Museum of Korea 101, 105, 115, 118, 125–128, 126, 127 1979 Cubitt lecture 126 1985 Venice Biennale 80 1987 Walter Gropius Lecture 97 1992 Barcelona Olympics 103 Ockman, Joan 136, 148n3 The Ohio State University 65 OMA’s Zeebrugge Sea Terminal 123 Ortega y Gasset 67

Palazzos Minelli 46, 47 Palazzo Surian 8 Palladio’s Palazzo Della Torre 46 Palladio Virtuel 41, 136 The Paradox of Continuity 13–15 Persinger, Matthew 140 Perspecta 8, 43, 50, 51, 146 Piazza Signoria 142, 145 Picon, Antoine 97, 105, 110n37–n40 practicing resistance: between 30–31; commentators 25–27; displace, disrupt 23–25; Eisenman’s gifts 31–32; idea of a swerve in architectural thinking 32; partial objects, partial figures 29–30; presentness 27–29; Solà-Morales strategy 32–34 presence 9, 15, 24, 26, 60–62, 67, 69, 79, 82, 83, 87, 95–97, 99, 105, 116, 119–121, 128, 139 The Presence of Absence 67 presentness 27–29, 61, 119, 120, 141 ‘Processes of the Interstitial (Eis 1997 El Croquis)’ 129 Progressive Corporation Headquarters 25, 27 Purini, Franco 98, 105, 108n1, 109n17, 110n41, 120 radical desolation 32 Rajchman, John 68, 71n32–n34, 123, 129 Ray, Man 63 Rebstockpark Master Plan 113, 129 Reeve, Margaret 148n8 Regional Music Conservatory and Contemporary Arts Centre 104–106 resistance 2, 4, 5, 8–11, 13, 15, 23–29, 31–34, 40, 42, 58–60, 66, 96, 99, 115, 121, 128, 131 ‘Rethinking Space and Time,’ 60 Retrospecta 136, 143, 144 Roman, Matt 53n9 Roman, Matthew 149n23, 149n24, 149n26 Romeo and Juliet 11, 26, 27, 60–62, 66, 75–77, 80–84, 81, 82, 86, 88–91, 95, 96, 101, 102, 107; architectural aspects 91; Cannaregio project 83; city and architecture 83; destabilisations in 81; development and publication 83; drawings and models 80; Long Beach project 84; scaling and superpositioning 82 Rossi, Aldo 11, 60–62, 107, 141, 145

156  Index Rowe, Colin 38, 46, 54n40, 54n43, 66–68, 71n28, 97, 103, 108, 109n11, 126, 148n2 Rowen, Jonah 141 ‘Sandboxes: House XIa’ 5 San Lorenzo diagrams 46 scaling 11, 26, 61, 62, 66, 75, 76, 79, 82–84, 87, 89, 96, 98, 101, 102, 135, 139 Scamozzi, Vincenzo 40 Scully, Vincent 32, 57, 69n1 The Seeds of Time 62 Serra, Richard 33, 84, 92n21 Slutzky, Robert 46, 54n40, 54n43 Solà-Morales, Ignasi de 2, 32–34, 35n29, 35n31, 35n32, 36n33, 69, 71n36, 71n37, 113–114, 120, 127, 130n4, 130n34, 130n38 Somol, Robert E. 114, 130n5 Sternad, Andrew 149n27 Stern, Robert 136, 148n4 Stirling, James 40 storia 58–59 Story of Amphion 64 Sullivan, Louis 114, 130n7 superpositioning 77, 80, 82, 86, 89, 99, 101 Surian 46, 47 Tafuri, Manfredo 38 teaching 3, 5, 11, 12, 15, 43, 51, 90, 107, 115, 141, 143, 146, 147 teaching displacement 134–149 Ten Canonical Buildings 39, 136 ‘Terragni and the Idea of a Critical Text’ 47, 49 Theoretical Anxiety 7 Third International Exhibition of Architecture of the Venice Biennale 75 Thom, René 118 Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America 136 Three Texts for Venice 77 Thresholds, 63 time 3–10, 12–15, 26–34, 40, 45, 47–49, 52, 57–69, 75–77, 80, 84, 86, 89, 91, 97–100, 103, 108, 114–117, 119, 120, 123, 126–129, 135, 136, 138, 141, 147 timeful mortality 31 Tokyo Opera House 1, 11, 61, 66, 96, 100, 100–104, 101, 107

Tours Regional Music Conservatory and Contemporary Arts Center 104–106 Tracing Eisenman or Peter Eisenman Tutte le opere 100–101 “The Transcripts” 12, 13, 17n52, 17n53 Travelers Financial Center (Hempstead) 25 ‘Tre opere recenti’ 25 The Truth in Painting 119 Tschumi, Bernard 64, 67 twoness 24 Unfolding Events 117–119 Ungers, Oswald Mathias 77 University Art Museum 21, 26, 75, 76, 84–89, 85, 91, 91 University of California 76 University of Cincinnati 30, 65 Utting, Brittany 143 Venice Hospital project 79, 145 Venice Project II 141 Venice Project III 141, 142 Venice Project studios 135, 136, 139–140, 142 Vidler, Anthony 38, 40, 41, 54n10, 113 Villa Noailles 63 Wang, Michael 148n14, 149n15, 149n17 Wellek Library Lectures in Critical Theory 62 Wexner Center for the Visual Arts 29, 65 Wexner Center for the Visual Arts and Fine Arts Library 9, 11, 95 Wexner Center Ohio State 120 Whiting, Sarah 114, 130n8 Wiskup, Evan 143 Wittkower, Rudolf 38 Wölfflin, Heinrich 38 Wright, Frank Lloyd 57 Written into the Void 48, 52 Yale School of Architecture 50, 91, 107, 135, 136, 139, 144 Yale Venice Project Studios 139–142 Yokohama International Port Competition 115, 123–125, 124, 125 Zaera-Polo, Alejandro 3, 26, 35n13, 35n14 ‘Zones of Undecidability I’ 129